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Happy World Gratitude Day (E36)

by

Happiness for Cynics

Happy World Gratitude Day!

In this week’s episode, Marie and Pete revisit the topic of gratitude and discuss some practical and fun ways to be more grateful in your life.

Transcript

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

P: And I am Peter Furness, keen recycler, blog writer and driver with the top down. Each week we 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: More? Then this is the place to be.

M: And to take us one step further on our happiness journey today is World Gratitude Day.

P: Yay.

[Happy Intro Music]

M: So welcome back. It is soon to be World Gratitude Day.

P: Yay!

M: [Laugh] September 21st for those of you who aren’t keeping track of these things.

P: Which is everybody.

M: Yep. [Laugh]

P: I didn’t know that as-well, until yesterday.

M: So what better time to start a new, practice of gratitude and bring a little bit more happiness into your life?

P: Of course, it’s what we’re here for.

M: And I think that is the point though, it’s about starting a new practice, and so many of us just aren’t doing that.

P: Mmm.. Do the work people. But it’s true and we’ve talked about this before in different episodes of making actions, doing actions to actually support what is going on with happiness and the elements of happiness, and gratitude is a big one.

M: Now early on in our journey of discovering happiness. We did an episode on gratitude, and we dug into the science. So today’s not about the science, today’s about practical things that you can do in the gratitude realm to increase your happiness. But it wouldn’t be our show if we didn’t just quickly touch on the science. [Laugh]

P: Of-course Marie, [laugh]. Science Marie?

M: I’m going to do it in one sentence.

P: Impressive.

M: You ready? 3.. 2.. 1  The science is clear, 30 years of Positive Psychology research, a lot of it in the area of gratitude, has shown us that practicing gratitude makes you happier, less stressed, it leads to higher overall well-being and satisfaction with your life and better social relationships.

P: Done.

M: And still, so many of us don’t practice Gratitude as part of our weekly practices.

P: Yes, actually, having a tick list of your active gratitude for the week.

M: Absolutely.

P: How many of us do it? [Whispers] Very few.. [Laugh] Maybe some of us do, do it? Marie?

[Laughter]

M: I’ve been doing a whole lot of research into habits and habit making and actually looking at successful people and how they start their days in particular.

P: Mmm. Yes.

M: Some people are really good at the end of the day’s as well, but a lot of it’s about how you start your day and really it comes down to scheduling it.

P: Yeah.

M: You put stuff in your diary and you make it a part of your daily or weekly practices and that happens, if you don’t, it doesn’t happen.

P: It’s exactly the same as starting a new diet or doing an exercise regime you’ve got to schedule it in.

M: Yep.

P: So you never go ‘Oh, I just forgot.’ No you didn’t forget you just didn’t do.

M: Yep, yep.

P: It’s on you people. [Laugh]

M: And to make it happen, you’ve got to make it part of your schedule. You’ve gotta have a diary and you’ve gotta have things that you prioritise. And that means also, at times things that you de-prioritise in order for that to happen.

P: Yes, making space for [it].

M: Definitely. So Gratitude. Super important. Do it people!

P: [Laugh]

M: Because what the science shows is it just like with exercise, you can train your brain to be more positive.

P: Yes, I agree.

M: So, look the science shows it, I’m glad you agree Pete.

P: [Laugh]

M: Today we’re going to talk about some brain exercises.

P: Yipee! Get on your sweat pants and your eighties fluorescent G strings with the headbands.

M: [Laugh]

P: Here we go.

M: Alright, so the first brain exercise comes from Shawn Achor, who’s the American author and speaker known for his advocacy of positive psychology, particularly in the work place. He’s the author of ‘The Happiness Advantage’ and he founded Goodthink [Inc.]

D: Ooh, good title.

M: Definitely. So this one is the easy one. I challenge anyone to tell me that they can’t do this.

P: Ok, challenge me. I’m already accepting the challenge. Tell me what I’m doing?

M: Great.

P: Oh oh…

M: I’ll see you in 21 days.

P: Oh this is another Altruistic August thing.

M: [Laugh] That you didn’t do.

P: [Indignant voice] I did do!

M: Anyway, Shawn has proven that in just a two minute span of time for 21 days you could rewire your brain. What it does is it re-wires your brain to work more optimistically and successfully.

P: Ok.

M: So he’s taken this into every company that he’s worked with and companies, your traditional companies, have some of the biggest cynics, I think.

P: Yes, Corporate. Definitely.

M: Absolutely. Two minutes a day for 21 days. And he’s rewiring their brains to be more optimistic.

P: Ok.

M: So here’s what you do. It’s so simple.

Write down three new things that you’re grateful for, for 21 days in a row.

P: New things?

M: New things each day.

P: Okay, all right.

M: At the end of that, your brain actually starts to retain a pattern of scanning the world for not the negative, but the positive.

P: Yeah ok. This is the camera thing. Focus on what you want and take a picture and if you don’t just get rid of the negative and take another shot.

M: Yeah.

P: Yes, I like it. I like it.

M: So that’s it.

P: It’s re-programming.

M: That is it. 21 days, two minutes, write down three things that you’re grateful for. And this is about teaching your brain to look for positive things. It could be. I am grateful for the clean air I’m breathing up here in Tamworth.

P: [Laugh] We all remember it was January this year, we were all wearing masks because of the bush fires and we’re there again. September is here, bushfire season is upon us again.

M: Yeah, I’m grateful for the majestic yet terrible and wild country we live in.

P: [Laugh]

M: But again, it’s about being grateful and noticing the little things that we, we take so much for granted.

P: Yeah. And it’s not until you don’t have it, you don’t realise how important it is.

M: So this is rewiring your brain to realise how important that is.

P: Oh completely, I’m very big on this. On taking those moments, and this comes back to mindfulness. So, driving down to the Royal National Park a couple of weekends ago and standing at Wattamolla Beach, I was so in awe of scenery and reminded myself, this is what you should be doing every month. Take an afternoon off, go for a walk in the park and find a spot where you could be inspired and just create awe and it’s so important. And that mindfulness each day, it could be when I’m sitting on the front balcony at 10 o’clock, because I’ve got a random half hour off, and soaking in the sunshine.

M: And stopping to feel that heat on your cheeks. It’s not just being in the sunshine. It’s appreciating that you are in the sunshine.

P: Yeah, definitely.

M: All right, so that was brain exercise number one. So simple yet so impactful. Number two is from the King, the founder of Positive Psychology, Martin Seligman and he calls this the Gratitude visit and this is so powerful.

P: Ok.

M: So this one takes a little bit more to do, but it is a one off, so you could do it once.

P: Is this is once a month, once a week?

M: Just, just a one off. You can do it once a year. That would be lovely to.

P: Ok.

M: So, Pete and listeners.

P: Oh oh. What, did I sign up for this?

M: Close your eyes. Sshh. Calm your mind Pete.

P: Oh, do I have to adopt the yoga lotus pose?

M: No just close your eyes. Now, if you’re a listener and you’re driving or running, don’t close your eyes.

P: [Laugh]

M: Stay with me Pete.

P: Sorry, focus, focus.

M: So if you’re running or driving then just listen intently. For the rest of you, close your eyes.

Okay. So, to start with, I want you to think back and remember someone who did something enormously important that has changed your life in a good way.

P: Okay.

M: They’ve got to be alive. Keep going till you find someone who’s impacted your life in a good way. Who’s still alive. Preferably someone that you’ve never properly thanked.

P: Okay, Got it.

M: Alright. Will you share with us, Pete?

P: Oh, yes. I will.

M: Yes. You can open your eyes.

P: So I’m thinking back to when I was 21 and it was my first job and a lovely young lady who was living in the house that I was being billeted at when I first flew up to Townsville in North Queensland. And.. we were having a party, and we were all in the pool, [it was] boiling hot. And she arrived late and introduced herself to me. And when I was trying to find a place to live, she was in real estate and so she helped me out with going to the real estate agent’s office and finding a home and we ended up becoming, we’ve ended up become lifelong friends, and I guess I have thanked her for other things. But I’ve never thanked her for the first couple of weeks where she basically taxied me around and helped me out. So, Sandra, I know you’re listening and –

M: – No, sshht.  So your assignment.

P: Oh, oh, sorry we’re not there.

M: I’m stopping you right there because you’re about to go into the next part of the assignment.

P: See I do this naturally.

[Laughter]

M: So for listeners at home and for Pete. You’ve now got someone who has impacted your life for the positive. Who is still alive.

P: Yep, yep.

M: Your assignment is to write a 300 word, testimonial to that person.

P: Oh, done. Easy. Got it.

M: Then you have to call them on the phone, ask if you can visit and don’t tell them why. Now they’re all the way out there. You don’t have to go all the way out in the world.

P: Okay.

M: So you could do this and just ask for a video call, particularly nowadays.

P: Ok. Righto

M: But it would definitely be far more powerful if you can see someone in person. Ask if you can visit and don’t tell them why. So you show up at the door or in today’s Covid world you videoconference them and you read them your testimonial. And according to Martin Seligman, everyone cries when this happens.

P: Yep. Especially if it’s in person.

M: Yes, exactly. That’s powerful, you know innately that’s powerful.

P: Yes. That’s right.

M: Okay, so here’s the good part. Apart from that just being such a feel good moment for you and the other person who’s receiving that message. The good part is, what Martin and his team have done is they’ve done this exercise with many people, and they’ve followed up with them afterwards and they test people one week later, a month later and three months later, three months later. Three months later, they’re both happier and less depressed.

P: Wow.

M: Both people, the giver and the receiver of the good message.

P: Oh, alright. I’m in, I’m down.

M: One simple thing, again it takes a little bit more time. But three months later, that powerful act has impacted.

P: And it would, especially if you’re there in person because you have taken time and effort to actually go and investigate and commit. That’s powerful, really powerful.

M: Yep.

P: Actions speak louder than words.

M: Absolutely. So that was my brain exercise Number two. It has three months worth of impact. The first one [only] 2 minutes for 21 days, don’t stop after 21 days, you can get into that habit and make it a habit, two minutes a day will rewire your brain to be more positive. And I actually know quite a few people who are true cynics.

P: [Laugh]

M: I call myself a cynic and I definitely did get really stuck in that corporate rat race through my twenties and think that that was just where I needed to be and where I was focusing my mental energy and efforts, but I have always been a bit positive.

P: [Laugh] You have.

M: But if you are wanting to look at the world more in a half glass full way, then that is a really great exercise, the first one to do.

P: And we can all get stuck in that as well. I mean as a supposedly positive person, as I’ve been called. [I was] called that this week, which was quite sweet. I still yell at  technology, I’m known to have a hissy fit when something’s not going right, and I’ll throw things, like I’ve broken the TV remote and then had to explain how I broke it to my housemate.

M: [Laugh]

P: And then I’m like ‘Ah yeah.. my bad.’

[Laughter]

P: So even if you are that happy person you can still do these exercises to remind yourself and to re- I think the refocusing, that camera thing- focusing on what is positive brings more positivity. It so works. It’s like seeing red cars.

M: [Laugh]

P: Say red car and then, all of a sudden all you see are red cars.

M: Yep. And I think that Covid has definitely made us get – Covid, and the media coverage that came with it- has definitely made us more attuned to the negative this year. So this is, this is a really good balancing act. So even for people who are positive and happy, I’ve seen a lot of them really come down from a positive into a neutral if not negative this year.

P: Yep.

M: Really good exercise for people who might be struggling this year with keeping a positive outlook.

P: Yep definitely. I mean, that’s a really nice segway into my contribution to the podcast.

M: Yes, so what have you got for us?

P: I’ve been looking at actions of gratitude. So there are so, so when you say gratitude people go ‘there’s so much choice of what to do, What’s the list? Give me a list. So I’ve gone through some of the known factors of gratitude that you can do.

Now there are big actions, as you’ve done in your two brain tasks. There are big, big actions that you could do what you could probably do once a week, once a month and this is a checklist. So if you haven’t had your act of gratitude for the week, this is a checklist you can go through and actually go ‘right, that’s what I’m going to do this month. That would be my one act of gratitude.’

So they’re things like giving a detailed example of appreciation;

Writing a positive review for someone

(which we all do these days with cafes, restaurants, headdresses, massage therapists.)

M: Well, here’s the thing, Pete. So having worked in public affairs, corporate affairs and looking at things like who leaves reviews and not.

You are so much more likely, I don’t know the stats off my head [21% more likely], but so much more likely and leave a negative review than a positive review.

P: Yes.

M: A negative review can significantly impact a business.

P: Hugely.

M: Hugely. So you’ve had a good experience with someone. Take the time to write them a review. Just three words, service was great or loved the food or whatever it is and pop down your stars into Google or whatever review app, makes such a difference to so many people.

P: And keeping that balance as well. I mean, I’ve written negative reviews because I’ve been so emotional after a bad experience.

M: Mm Hmm.

P: I think it’s important to then go ‘Right, where am I gonna put my positive review? Keep it balanced.

M: Yep, yep.

P: Because that’s important about that focus.

M: Yep.

P: Reminding yourself to focus on the positive.

Be an active listener.

M: Sorry?

P: Active listening, so really engaging with someone.

[Laughter]

M: It took you a while.

P: I was on a roll there.

M: What, sorry. Did you say something?

P: [Laugh] Active listening, it’s engaging with the person. So it’s not speaking over the top of them.

[Laughter]

P: Jumping in on their conversation, which we never do on the podcast.

[Laughter]

P: But really listening to what someone is saying, hearing their words and even waiting before you respond and thinking about what you’re going to respond with. That’s really important, and that’s about empathy as well and tapping into so many other [Positive Psychology aspects].

M: To build on that thinking about what you’re going to respond with after they’ve spoken, because you’re always thinking about what you’re going to say next. You’re not really actually listening.

P: That’s right, yeah.

Giving out compliments

Oddly enough we don’t do it all the time. You think ‘that was nice’ and walk away. Whereas if someone’s been really, really great getting to service, I think if someone’s giving you great service or if someone’s actually helped you out at the cash register in woolworths, give them a compliment. Train your brain to give those compliments. Sorry I’m clicking, I’m excited.

M: [Laugh] But also the better you know someone, the less likely you are to remember to tell them.

P: compliment them. Yes.

M: Tell them lovely, you don’t even have to believe these ones. Just is a really lovely thing to do.

P: Yeah.

M: “I love your earrings.” “Your hair looks pretty today”, you know “Nice shoes.” Whatever it is, you have got a beautiful smile.

P: Yep.

M: Actually, if you can stay away from the clothes that I just mentioned.

P: [Laugh]

M: That’s a bit empty isn’t it?

P: Not necessarily.

M: A little bit empty but still, still better than nothing, right?

P: Yeah.

Volunteering for unpleasant tasks.

Now, this is something that a lot of people won’t want to do. Taking the garbage out, cleaning the garbage bins. Oh, that’s a big one.

M: Well, when we talked about love language. I said that’s service to others.

P: Yes.

M: So this is what I do. I clean, I cook, I, you know, whatever it is. I hate doing it all.

P: [Laugh]

M: But it is my way of showing love to others.

P: That’s a weekly thing, if you can do one unpleasant task a week. You’re on the right path.

M: Yep.

P:

Hug someone.

M: Yay!

P: This is my love language, give someone a hug.

M: Happy to hug someone.

P: Go up and just throw you arms around someone randomly. That was actually a really funny thing when we went back to volleyball after Covid and our President of our Gay and Lesbian Volleyball Association released a press statement saying, ‘No hugging or kissing.’ It was like ‘what! Are you kidding!’ [Laugh]

M: Bloody Covid, actually hug someone in your household.

P: Yep. OK.

M: Yeah.

P: Excellent.

Be gracious when you’re challenged.

Now, this is a hard one. When someone is challenging you, when someone is making a critique of you or giving you some feedback, which is not positive, be gracious with it. Understand where they’re coming from, again be an active listener. Try to, not take it personally, if you can. It’s a hard one.

M: Yeah, I’d say that if you’re in a good mental space, then that is where you should be aiming. If you’re not in a good mental space in your first gut reaction is defensiveness or being upset again it’s about just taking a breath and understanding. It’s not necessarily even about you of times.

P: Yeah, exactly.

M: Your reaction could be more, feeling triggered, rather than a true reaction.

P: And taking a moment to understand that is very important.

M: Yeah. So being gracious when challenged, I’d say Absolutely. We should be aiming for that when we’re in a good mental health space. Being forgiving of yourself if you’re not right now, because that’s we’re all, all over the place at the moment as well.

P: Yep. That’s fair.

A hand written note.

Writing a card, birthday card, get well card, leaving a card at someone’s door. All that sort of stuff. That’s a really easy one to do once a week.

M: Yeah.

P: If you feel like it, and it makes a big impact. We don’t receive things in the mail anymore. And it would make a lovely distract[ion], even if you come home and see something on the door. Someone saying I liked this about their day today.

Journal your Blessings.

P: Again, keeping a journal. This is a daily one. That’s a really good one, a really powerful one. So, if you haven’t got a journal, go buy one. And the big one:

Smile.

M: Smile.

P: Smile, pen between the teeth.

M: Can we, yeah, there’s one.

P: [Laugh]

M: Can we finish with that?

P: Okay.

M: So, I did message this to, I have a group chat going on ‘What’s app’ or ‘messenger’ or something, and I asked everyone to put a pen in their mouths and show their teeth for 30 seconds. So you put, like a dog with a bone.

P: [Laugh]

M: So sticking out the sides, not, not straight but going sideways. So it’s sticking out both sides of your mouth and put it really far back in your teeth and show your teeth, your front and your top teeth, but a pen. Do it and hold it there for 30 seconds. I asked everyone on the chat to send me their photos.

P: [Laugh]

M: Now, firstly, the photos were hilarious.

P: [Laugh] I was wearing my unicorn hat.

M: They were pretty, pretty, funny. Secondly, this is just such an easy trick. So because you’re cheeks are pulled back in the shape of a smile, your brain is tricked into releasing the feel good chemicals-

P: Oxytocin?

M: – because it thinks that you are happy because you’re smiling essentially. And what I found most interesting was who engaged with that request in the group and who didn’t.

P: Yes, Ah interesting.

M: Yes, anyway, I’m not going to psycho-analyse my friends on this show.

P: [Laugh]

M: But it was it was really telling and a great exercise to just give yourself a short, sharp, quick happiness boost.

P: And we were all wondering what was going to come back at us.

[Laughter]

P: It’s a good one to do.

M: Absolutely. All right. Well, we’re done for today. Thank you again. I would love if you could visit our site marieskelton.com and check out the book that we’re launching.

P: Oh, exciting!

M: Yes, a spin off from one of our favourite episodes, Self-care is Church for Non-Believers, and our book will be launched on Amazon. You can pre order it now. Yes. So look for Self-Care is Church from Non-Believers. Or go to our website, marieskelton.com and check out the book section to order it there.

P: Thanks and subscribe to this podcast if you like it and people, Choose Happiness.

[Happy Exit Music]

Related content: Read Moving On article Practicing Gratitude: Why and How You Should do it , listen to our Podcast: The Importance of Gratitude (E3)

How to Make a Happy Home (E35)

by

Happiness for Cynics

This week, Marie and Pete discuss the 2020 Good Home Report, which shows that if you are happy with your home, you are almost certainly happy in life. In fact, our homes are more important to our overall happiness than our income or jobs. 

Transcript

M: You’re listening to the podcast happiness for cynics.

P: She’s Marie Skelton are writer and speaker, focused on change and resilience, who writes in colours and sticks post-its to the walls and makes a mean breakfast sandwich.

M: And he’s Peter Furness, a Disney loving, wine swigging best buddy. Each week we bring to you the latest news and research in the world of positive psychology, otherwise known as happiness.

P: So if you’re feeling low.

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

P: Or maybe you just want more.

M: Then this is the place to be.

P: And to take us one step further on our happiness journey. Today’s episode is all about Happy Homes.

[Happy Intro Music]

P: [Laugh] So what I don’t think everybody realises is that while the music is playing, Marie and I tend to be darting around like two little five years old on the Wiggles episode pretending to do the music.

M: We dance every time, we find it to be the most annoying music we’ve ever heard and that’s probably why we picked it, really.

[Laughter]

P: The odd thing is it puts us in the right headspace

M: Yes.

P: Because when we do that, we come in and we’re really up.

M: Yes, definitely.

P: Change of physicality.

M: [Laugh] So today, Happy homes. And this is really your turf.

P: Oh! My house mates are gonna listen to this episode and go, uh huh, uh huh.

M: [Laugh]

P: I feel so sorry for my housemates sometimes what they put up with, it’s all my mother’s fault.

M: Yeah, I think my husband would probably agree. I don’t think he.. I am house proud.

P: Very.

M: Yes. Oh, very.

P: Yeah you are, your design and your style thing. Very particular.

M: Yes, so husband has to go along with that. You know, happy wife, happy life. [Laugh]

[Laughter]

M: But there is research and we’ve been reading the Happy Homes report. So that’s put out by the Happiness Research Institute.

P: It’s a fabulous document. I’m so impressed that someone’s actually going out and done the research on happy homes and what they do for us.

M: Absolutely. And it’s so important nowadays because most of us are in isolation.

P: Yeah [Laugh]

M: Or you know, if not completely isolated. We’ve just entered a period of our lives almost where we’re spending so much more time and home.

P: Mmm. And I think this is the telling thing at the moment as well is people are much more conscious of their own spaces now. So I’m finding with a lot of my clients. They’re saying, ‘oh, I have to change things around now because I’m not set up correctly for being at home so much.’

Some clients are doing seriously well because they’re in the home space, they’re putting laundry on at random hours of the day, they’re getting breaks. They’re actually doing superbly well because they’re getting out and they’re pottering in the garden and going for walks and things, whereas before they weren’t doing it.

M: Yep.

P: So for some people, it’s been a really positive change.

M: Well, if you think about that, I’m really close to the city in Sydney. But it still takes me a good hour door to door, well door to desk.

P: That is Sydney Public Transport.

[Laughter]

M: Exactly. But that’s two hours of my day I’m getting back.

P: Mm Hmm, absolutely. Yeah. So having.. the home is your happy castle, if you like, all those sorts of quotes, there’s a lot of truth in it now. And here we’ll tell you why. Because of the science.

M: Definitely. So here is the science.

P: Oh, is that me?

[Laughter]

“The home space is a treasure trove of information about who we are, who we want to be, and what makes us happy.”

That comes from Lindsey Graham who’s a psychologist and research specialist at the Psychology of Space at the Centre for the Built Environment, University of California, Berkeley.

M: That’s a mouthful isn’t it?

[Laughter]

M: Thanks, Lindsay. Great job.

P: Can we just sat University in California?

[Laughter]

P: She’s blind and she has three children.

M: [Laugh] So one of the other things that we have to mention is that the Happiness Research Institute that did the report found that happiness of our home is almost three times as important to our overall happiness as our income.

P: Oh, I’d agree with that.

M: So I think one of the great things about this report is that it looks at people who are renting. It looks that people who live in mansions and it looks at everything in between, And it doesn’t matter whether you live in that mansion and or you live in a falling apart dorm house with two other students and me down furniture. There’s still so much you can do to make your home a happy place that impacts on your levels of happiness.

P: Yes.

M: So I thought that was really interesting. So there are five core emotions Pete, that this research looks into.

P: The document talks a lot about the five core elements that come from a happy home and what that entails and they list them as:

  • Pride; [44%]
  • Comfort; [25%]
  • Identity; [17%]
  • Safety; and [10%]
  • Control. [4%]

And these emotions are mental states. So by investing in our home and finding a sense of identity within it and creating a happy space, we’re catering to these five basic emotions and mental states. Pride is the big one. It apparently counts for 44% of the emotions based around a happy home and you found this one quite telling for you Marie.

M: Yeah, I did. Look if 44% of your feelings about your home are tied up in how proud you feel about your home and how happy you are with your home directly impacts your happiness level. Then, dig in to pride. Nearly half of it comes from pride. So how can you build pride in your home in order to have a happier home and a happier life is what I wanted to look into it and I just, I’ve written a post on my side about this and looked at ways that you can bring pride into your home without necessarily spending much or any money.

P: Mmm, yes. It doesn’t cost.

M: Yeah, definitely.

P: It comes back to cleaning, my big passion.

M: Well, that’s the first thing, the three cheap things that you can do is make your bed in the morning, tidy up, clean your house, and it is amazing what 2 to 3 hours of spring cleaning can do. Firstly, if you haven’t done it in a while, it can lead to more mess.

P: [Laugh]

M: Just a warning.

[Laughter]

M: But once you get through all that de cluttering or cleaning, whatever activities you’re doing, there are so many positive benefits psychologically. And that’s the whole reason that Marie Kondo’s books have sold so well and her Netflix show is doing so well, is that this stuff works.

P: And it even comes down to, the influences that we found, I think that you know the advent of the home renovation show ‘The Block’ and all these things. People enjoy that because not only do they get to pass judgement on other people’s homes, but it is this investment in the space, investment in the private space of your home and who doesn’t feel proud of having a clean house with ambient candles, lighting everything as people come over for dinner.

It’s, it’s an investment in the self. When you’re hosting a dinner party, you’re hosting friends coming over. You clean up a little bit. You make it nice. You put a little bit of flowers in a vase on the table and so forth. You grab some stuff from the outside garden and bring it inside, and it creates an ambience. That investment in the space is an investment in the self.

M: Yes, absolutely.

P: You’re taking pride in something. You’re getting pride. I find it interesting because you’re getting pride from an external source. So if you’re wanting to feel a bit, more, better about yourself, going and cleaning the house and creating a space and rearranging a bit of furniture at midnight so that it looks different and then stand there and look at it. You’ll feel a sense of achievement. It ticks that box of achievement you’ve achieved a task and then when other people walk into that space go ‘Oh, this is nice’ again that’s a positive affirmation. It’s a reaffirmation of your own, your own projection..

M: Self.

P: Yeah.

M: Well identity was one of the things there, 17% of how you feel that your home is tied up in your identity.

P: Yeah, the report talked about it being the integral part of ourselves. It represents who we are and how we would like to be perceived.

So it’s that opening the home up and it doesn’t even really have to be friends and so forth. The water reading man can walk in and say something and it can give you a sense of pride for the morning.

M: Yep and I think there is often, I’ve noticed when you’re just not feeling great about yourself or you’re going through a rough patch and you let the house slide and you also stop inviting people over.

P: Yep.

M: Not feeling house proud can be a real barrier to social connection.

P: Yeah, definitely. That’s a good point. I think it’s interesting that that could actually be a tool as well. If you’re having a low moment, get out the Dettol!

M: [Laugh]

P: Clean the bathroom and see how you feel. [Laugh] Oddly enough, maybe it works.

M: [Laugh] Maybe we just stumbled upon the key to solving happiness.

P: Throw on an apron get some yellow gloves on and make yourself feel better.

[Laughter]

P: It’s a good concept.

M: There is something nice though, about coming into the kitchen and that clean smell that you get from having used cleaning products as well. Not just wiping down the kitchen cabinet after making toast.

P: Yeah, true.

M: Well, it doesn’t even smell.

P: ..The report does talk about control as being one of the five emotions. Now this is the [it] only accounts for 4% of the emotions that they monitor. But I would actually question that. I would say it’s more, by taking control of your home environment and I think, because I am a share house person. I again, I apologise to my housemates, who are probably sitting there with their arms crossed right now.

M: [Laugh]

P: Petie rules the house.

M: [Laugh]

P: The couch will go there and the side table will go there. And if someone moves something, I’m like ‘Why is that over there?’

[Laughter]

P: So I actually do take a lot of control and find a lot of control in controlling the space in which I am in.

M: So this report was done last year before Covid. And I think that a lot of the uncertainty and anxiety that we’ve all felt this year has come from a lack of control. So it would be interesting to do this survey again. So just to give a bit of context. The research was done in Europe so I imagine it would be similar enough in Australia.

P: Yes.

M: To bring over, and predominantly Western Europe, so similar enough. But I think that if we’d done this in the survey and the research again during Covid, control might actually be more of a factor. Because we’ve had so little control over so much of our lives this year.

P: Mm, mm. Yeah, that’s what I think. It’s more than 4% for me. Safety is 10%. And I understand that as well in terms of your home being your safe space.

M: Yes, particularly for the elderly, it found. So a lot of elderly people go out to the world and do not feel safe. But their home is somewhere they come home to. They can lock the doors and feel safe in their bubble, their world, their home?  Yeah, Definitely. So what else we got, Pete?

P: Well, we’ve kind jumped around those five, five core emotions [elements]. It is worth saying that these are all interlinked, so that sense of control and safety can lead to greater pride and comfort, and they all sort of cross over and share in that sort of way.

M: Mm, Hmm.

P: I mean, that’s the guts of the report. The report also talks about whether you’re a renter or whether you’re a buyer. I think that that’s an interesting aspect because not everybody owns their own home. And one of the facts that I found interesting was, you don’t need to own your own home or own the space to actually feel that happy, safe space for you. You can do this when you’re a renter.

M: Yep, Absolutely. There’s, you might not be other paint the walls, but there’s now those great sticky things that you pull down on.

P: The 3M stickers.They have changed home decorating for ever! [Laugh]

M: So you can put stuff up on the walls and also you can use colour, pops of colour. So we said pride through achievement, you can reach pride by cleaning or re.. sorry

de-cluttering your home. But there’s also pride through re-decoration and I love this one. We’ve talked about flow before. That setting yourself the task and getting into enjoying the task of redecorating. So Pinterest is great for finding inspiration and pinning boards of things that you do and don’t like. And you can go on to Pinterest and look for orange themed bedrooms.

P: Oh! I didn’t know this.

M: Ha ha. Or Indian inspired bathrooms.

P: Oh, wow. I like this idea.

M: You know, there’s any number of things and you can pin them all to a board and get inspiration. And then nowadays, there’s not only -so I have to say, k-mart has really picked up its game in home decor.

P: Interesting. Yeah.

M: Candles. All your basic candles, pop plants, little knickknacks,

P: Clocks.

M: Clocks, [Laugh] anything. They have definitely picked up their game and you can things really quite cheaply. And then there’s places like Etsy, who are – oh Pete.

P: I don’t know Etsy. 

M: [Gasp] Etsy is where all the artistic people sell their stuff.

P: Oh.

M: Yes, And so it’s people making broaches or pillows or artwork, all kinds of stuff.

P: I just go to my Mum for that.

M: [Laugh] I think my Mum crochets.

P: Everything looks like 1950’s, but that’s ok it’s good.

M: [Laugh] But it’s also really reasonably priced. So that’s E-T-S-Y, worth checking out. But there’s a million different online shopping options, even if it’s just eBay or Amazon where you can find cheap items to make your, your project come to life.

P: Nice. I like that.

M: Yeah, so I’d say pride through achievement, so cleaning, definitely. And then there’s pride through redecorating. If you want to, even your local op shops. And on the last one, the big one.

P: [Laugh]

M: You mentioned before HD TV and all the home reno shows. The only thing I’ll say is, if you’re not an electrician, don’t do electronics.

P: [Laughter] Find help when you need it.

M: Yes.

P: There are some things it’s better off paying someone to do.

M: Yep, I mean, there are great YouTube tutorials out there, but still.

P: [Laugh] We’ve all been there staring in front of the electrical socket going ‘if I connect that red thing to the green thing am I gonna, Ooh!

M: [Laugh] Have we all been there? I was thinking maybe I could do flooring. That looks like it’s.. yeah don’t.

P: [Laugh]

M: Hire a professional, with the amount of money you put into buying all the stuff.

P: Yeah, true.

M: You’re doing a reno.

P: I get that.

M: That’s the, that’s the big one. But again, you don’t have to go full hog to find that pride in your home and pride isn’t the whole, you know story either.

P: How do you mean pride isn’t the whole story?

M: There’s the five [four] other things as well, so identity. So you could actually design all your own artwork. If that is an expression of your identity.

P: Sure, yeah. Where do we go from here?

M: I do like the paragraph on the sizes and everything.

P: [Laugh] They do bust some myths in this report about home owning on what it means, and they say that size isn’t everything. So, if you don’t have a palatial mansion, doesn’t mean you can’t take pride in the space. And I think I discovered this when I was a student and I had my tiny little two bedder house in Mountain Street in South Melbourne. And we had wicker furniture.

M: [Laugh]

P: It was disgusting. My flat mate at the time would come home and in this small space I’d managed to rearrange the wicker furniture around the television. And he’d come in and stumble over something going and go ‘oh Pete rearranged the house again.’

M: [Laugh]

P: But it was, it was that sense, there can be a real sense of achievement and ownership in small spaces. You just have to be clever and spending some time and some research actually on small spaces and how to create perceptions of space in a small room. So letting more light in,

M: Light.

P: creating, having furniture in the right ratio. Tall furniture might make a space feel more enclosed, low to the ground furniture might open it up a little bit more. All those sort of factors could be a research project and investing in yourself via your home.

M: Yes, definitely, and even light furnishings rather than dark.

P: Mmm. Which is interesting when you do look. Like watching, what is it, ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’, the new one?

M: Yes! Please.

P: The guy who does the kitchens he has everything is dark timber. He always paints the kitchens in a dark colour.

M: Yeah, but those houses in the States are huge.

P: Yeah, that’s true.

M: Compared to European and Australian nowadays.

P: And there’s actually more light I suppose.

M: A thing that I wanted to mention in the report is back to this idea of comparison. So we’ve talked about before how one of the natural, biologically driven things that we do is compare ourselves to others.

P: Yes.

M: Right. And it is so bad for your psyche.

P: Thank you social media.

M: So, so bad. And even just these home reno shows we’re watching in America as people redo an entire 20 metre by 20 metre kitchen for $10,000.

P: [Laughter]

M: It’s just not doable in our country. Who has a kitchen that big, ever!

P: [Laugh]

M: But it’s just again about being mindful of comparing yourself to others, and something that the report did find is that if you, back to your earlier point, if you’re a university student and you’re in a home that has mouldy floorboards and the kitchen’s falling apart, you could be as happy as Larry because you’re a student and everyone else is in the same kind of boat as you.

P: Yep.

M: But if you feel that your peers, the people around, your friends and people in a similar life stage as you are ahead of you. Then that can be really hard to reconcile with your happiness levels. And it it really does have a negative impact.

P: I think, I think that also it comes down to investing in what you have though as well. So it’s one thing to go to someone’s, someone else’s place and to see their situation. And if they are on a similar timeline to you, similar time frame, working similar jobs and so forth. Yes, you can compare it to yourself, but innately, I think you should invest in yourself and reflect on what you do have and what you have control over again, we’re coming back to these five major emotions that investing in the home space creates.

Maybe that’s the key, investing in what you have. And if you’re not spending time looking after your house and if you’re essentially ‘we don’t keep it clean, we don’t do the weekly clean’ and it’s a pig sty and if that makes you feel like you’re not achieving, then maybe you need to spend some time and do the work, as I always say, on creating a space that’s enjoyable. It’s not about expense. It’s about bringing a flower in every now and then. So, little things like that to make a huge difference.

M: Okay, so what is the one tip that you would leave for listeners? To make their home happier.

P: Do a spring clean.

M: For me, I would say, bring some of that green space indoors.

P: Ooh right, nice.

M: All right, we might end there.

P: Have a read of the report. It’s really good. And it’s worthwhile spending some time reading and taking it on. I think it’s a wonderful initiative.

M: Alright and on that note, Thank you for joining us. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe and we would love a review on any of our channels, if you can.

P: Yes. That would make us very happy.

[Laughter]

P: Until next time folks, choose happiness.

[Happy Exit Music]

Related content: Read Moving On article What makes a Happy Home

Is it Even Possible to be Happy During COVID? (E34)

by

Happiness for Cynics

This week, Marie and Pete discuss a recent study that looks at whether positive psychology interventions work during a global pandemic. Is it even possible to be happy during a pandemic? The answer might surprise you.

Transcript

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

P: And I’m Peter Furness a champagne swilling, fried chicken cooking over-indulger of gastronomy. 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 retail therapy isn’t working.

P: Or bingo day isn’t the same without a drag queen.

M: Or you might be a bit interested in all this positive psych. stuff, even though you’d never tell your friends.

P: Then this is the place to be.

M: And today we’re talking about whether you can even be happy during a global pandemic.

[Happy Intro Music]

M: Thanks for joining us today. I have moved to Tamworth, so I’m going to apologise right now if our Internet bandwidth isn’t what it used to be. And if there are some technical and or its sound issues. But I hope that you forgive us and stick with us and enjoy the show. All right, Pete. So today we’re talking about a recent study that’s come out about positive psychology interventions during Covid and during the pandemic.

P: Mmhh.

M: And before we get into what that research showed, I think maybe we need to back up a little bit, just summarise some of all of the research and stats that talk about positive psychology and what’s going on and what we’re seeing in Covid. So we know that pre-Covid things weren’t looking so great.

P: No..

M: To be quite frank. The Pew Research Centre estimated that 52% of working dads and 60% of working moms found it somewhat or very difficult to balance work and family life. So there was stress on working parents.

P: Yep.

M: The Edelman Trust barometer revealed that 83% of employees feared losing their jobs. This is a global study that actually was the 2020 study that came out just before Covid here. So 83% of employees feared losing their jobs, and the World Health Organisation noted that depression and anxiety have an estimated cost of the global economy of $1 trillion per year in lost productivity.

P: Hhmm only half what apple make.

M: Really? Trillion? two trillion really?

P: That’s their share values.

M: Yeah.

P: So if you work for apple, pat yourself on the back and have a glass of champagne.

[Laughter]

M: So that’s just three stats, there are so many more that talk about loneliness, depression, anxiety, mental health more broadly and how just as a society things are about to hit that breaking point.

P: Mmhh.

M: I think the straw that broke the camel’s back kind of moment and that was all pre Covid.

P: Yep.

M: And now since the pandemic hit, we have seen a dramatic increase in stress, anxiety and overall poor mental health across Australia.

P: Ok.

M: So in June, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on two studies, one suggested that the number of people displaying symptoms of anxiety, stress and depression in the community have risen between 13 to 21%.

P: Uh huh.

M: While the other found that roughly one in every five people is experiencing clinically relevant depression symptoms.

P: Right.

M: Now that one to me isn’t as scary because I think people have been saying for a while now in Australia at least that one in five people will experience depression in their lives, so that’s pretty much on par. But for one in five to be, currently all experiencing depression symptoms, that’s a bit of a difference as well.

P: Ok yep. The Danish study, published in April, found that 2458 people reported an increased level of stress and anxiety. This is alongside an American study that found people were eight times more likely at the moment to fit the criteria of serious mental illness.

The interesting thing about the American study is that those between the ages of 18 to 44 were more likely to be adversely affected than the older generations. And I think that’s an interesting point because that’s right in that bracket of people who are not as secure maybe and not as relaxed in their approach, they’re, you know, up and comers. They’re trying to make their way and get their careers secure or getting, launching them even if you’re 18 to 23 you know there’s a lot of pressure on that generation. You know, “Go generation.. what are we at Y or something”

M: Millenial. They’re Millenials.

P: Millenials, they’ve got a rough deal. We’ve said it before and they really have.

M: I think also, they’ve never been tested. Whereas the older generations had Vietnam, they had their recession in the eighty’s as well and their uncertainty and financial insecurity through that period, the recession that Australia had to have.

P: Yep, all that sort of stuff. Good old Paul Keating.

M: Ha ha.

P: I feel that, I feel that with what you’re saying is that it’s the snap at the co-worker, it’s the yelling at the kids when you don’t realise it. And I think they’re little things to be aware of in terms of the … experience of the Covid lock down, which we’re, we’re an international podcast. But obviously our audience I think is very Australian based.

M: Yep.

P: I think it’s really important to recognise the influences. So if you are feeling a bit crappy and you do have a little bit of a snap at someone, you take it on board and go, Yeah, the stress and anxiety that is being experienced is making an impact on our daily lives. Our interactions with our wives, spouses, children, housemates, friends all that sort of stuff is making a difference.

M: Yeah, absolutely, even in the most resilient of us.

P: Exactly. Definitely.

M: So in normal times we would not, we would say, to people who are experiencing normal, manageable levels of stress, anxiety and depression. To.. I’m sorry, I hate to use the word normal there, I’m taking that back.

P: [Laugh]

M: But manageable day to day levels of sadness, anxiety, stress, we would say institute some positive psychology interventions, and you will see results.

P: Yes, yes that.

M: Overall, there are thousands of studies that confirmed that many positive psychology interventions help people to feel happier overall, and they lower levels of depression and anxiety.

P: Yes.

M: Some interventions work better than others. You’ve also got to match the person to the intervention as well, but they do show effects. Now where I want to talk about today is whether or not positive psychology interventions work in Covid times?

P: Ok.

M: So There’s a study that just came out two weeks ago by Webster University. It’s a small study, and it was completed during the pandemic, with a small group of 45 women and men between 23 to 40 years old. And they had a control group and another group that were asked to do Positive Psychology Interventions and what they found, unlike pre Covid time studies is that not very much happened with the overall levels of happiness in the participants.

P: So there’s no increase in levels of contentment and happiness necessarily.

M: Or subjective well-being. No, this is new, this is different. But here’s the but.

P: [Laugh]

M: There’s a but, there’s always a but.

When it came to levels of depression, anxiety and stress, the participants who did the positive psychology interventions had lower levels.

P: And that’s the gold.

M: Yep. So it’s not that it made people happier, but it stopped them from being sadder.

P: Stopped them from going down that hole, yeah. And let’s face it we know that doing some things on a daily basis, which we’ve talked about a lot during this podcast that makes a big difference to your general well-being. And it’s those small things that stop you from going deeper down a hole of stress in times of great anxiety and heightened awareness that is most important.

M: Absolutely.

P: Maintain, maintain a balance, ride the wave and stay it, stay at that plateau if you can, if you’re doing that, you’re doing well.

M: Yep, so being in a neutral mental health space is better than being in a negative mental health space.

P: And that’s what you want to hold on to in times of crisis, you want to just maintain that, that level of calm if you can. And I think, I think that’s my mother’s generation and my mom is a war baby and they were on rations in the middle of the outback in Australia and the relative experience is if you’ve got food on the table at the end of the day you’re doing well. It doesn’t have to be fillet mignon.

M: No.

P: Food on table and you’ve got a shirt on your back. It’s all good, and I think that maybe this is our defining moment when, when we look at the studies and a reference before about that American study, saying that the 18 to 44 year old’s are more likely be adversely affected. Our parents are more [mentally prepared], especially my parents who are slightly older than a lot of people. It’s a relative experience and it comes down to those basics and again, mindfulness, which we talked about a lot and appreciating the small things and the basic needs being met at a time when everything is… let’s face it, going to shit.

M: Yep. Well, it is good that you mentioned being thankful there because this study, again just a small group. But I think it makes sense to me right. It makes sense that this is something that could apply a bit more broadly but this group did gratitude exercises as part of their positive psychology interventions, and they showed a decrease in their levels of low moods, anxiety and stress. And all it took was 14 days.

P: Yeah wow.

M: So doing activities in the positive psychology sphere of things you could do like gratitude, it only takes a little is 14 days to recalibrate your, you know, we call it the Corona Coaster of emotions.

P: [Laugh] Do we?

M: It’s up and down. Well yeah. The corona coaster, we’re all on it right now. Some of us have just doing those little up, down, up, down, up, downs and a pretty like [ok] but some of us are going 90 degrees up and then 90 degrees down, right.

P: [Laugh]

M: What you want is those little fluctuations?

P: I always was a moderate rollercoaster boy. I didn’t want the big ones. [Laugh]

M: Yeah, well, you don’t in mental health terms either.

P: [Laugh]

M: It [Positive Psychology interventions] just helps to stabilise you is I guess what I’m saying. So you’re not having those lows.

P: Yes, staying on that even keel. And in times of anxiety, that’s the point. You don’t want those big moments of happiness. You don’t want to be running down the street screaming ‘my life is fabulous!’ You just want to be on that nice, ‘Yeah, I’m doing well. I’m going alright, everything is normal, I’m okay.

M: Everything’s normal. Some thing’s are bad, some things are good. I react accordingly and appropriately but in general I’m staying strong.

P: So I’m going to bring in some stuff here from BBC Future, which I was having a bit of research of.

The top things to do during the Covid crisis.

Actual tips that you can do that are actually going to make a difference today. And this goes on the back of all positive psychology work. So we know that those things of gratitude, graciousness, meditation, self-care, all that sort of stuff helps.

Distraction was the first one. Distract yourself. Go and do something that distracts your mind.

M: Mmhh, I would say this equates to having a hobby or something to do.

P: Something that takes your mind completely out of the stress of looking at the news.

For me and you Muz, it’s volleyball.

M: Yep, you’re writing Pete.

P: I will read a quote of yours Muz, ‘Volleyball is its own little bubble.’

M: Oh, it always is. That was a coach, quote, wasn’t it?

P: Yes. It was in fact and I love it, I’ve used it many times. But that’s the idea is you use something that actually takes you away and gives you complete mindfulness at that point, which is great. So from my mum, it’s orchid gardening.

M: Yep.

P: Good old Mum.

M: Gardening is something we can even do in isolation and in shut down. So as long as you’ve gotten the equipment beforehand, even people who are living in apartments can do little gardens on their balconies.

P: It can be as easy as shifting the plot plants around like I did that today. I shifted some plants in the back to the front, and it was 15 minutes in the sunshine because it was a beautiful sunny day in Sydney today and that’s enough.

M: Yep.

P: Moving on.

Meditate, ah Marie your favourite past time.

M: Sorry I missed that.

[Laughter]

P: Meditate, Marie’s favourite pastime.

M: [Noise of derision] Yeah, no I was joking. I prefer to sleep than meditate. It’s the same thing in my mind.

P: Look, meditation is hard and it’s the whole thing of… And I think what I would actually insert here as opposed to Meditate is being mindful. Today I sat on the front veranda with my cup of tea and my little lunch, and the first time in, I’d say 11 years, I’ve been in this house for 11 years, I heard the wind whistling through the Cyprus pine across the road. It’s the first time in 11 years that I’ve heard that sound.

M: Was it a windy day.

P: Yeah. Meditation. It’s Mindfulness. Spend two minutes being silent, that’s all it is. You don’t have to meditate, you don’t have to clear your mind. All that stuff, reference our previous episode on meditation.

M: Yeah, and so if meditation isn’t your thing, I would offer have a bath, have a device free, distraction free, bath.

P: Yep.

M: And as you’re sitting in the bath. Go top to bottom and get all your muscles to relax.

So I feel the stress leaving. And then this is actually meditation. I sit in the bath and actually feel the stress. Leave your, your face, your neck, your shoulders and go down your arms.

P: Yes, love it.

M: Leave your book out of the bathtub. Leave your devices, your music. Turn it all off and have a bath.

P: Yep, have quiet time. Love it.

M: Yeah.

P: Next one,

Don’t obsess over being happy or positive.

M: Oh yeah, this is so true. Yeah.

P: You’re not feeling great, don’t worry about it.

M: Yep, but also don’t chase it. This is also-

P: – I love that you said that Marie. Don’t chase it.

M: It’s the journey.

P: Yeah, definitely. And it comes right back to our original episode.

Happiness is not a destination. Happiness is the journey.

M: Mhm.

P: Don’t expect, don’t set these high expectations for yourself and maintain this plastic smile on your face, like Barbie. [Laugh] We love Barbie but you know, even her cheeks got sore in Toy Story.

M: [Laugh]

P: Watch the credits, you’ll see the reference I’m talking about. All right, moving along.

Focus on the small things.

So a small cup of tea during the day can actually be enough. If you can have a cup of tea and sit down for five minutes, that’s enough. If you can maintain that sort of level of normalcy, you’re doing well.

M: I think the other thing to add in here. A lot of what we talk about need to be done as habits. So you need to set up the routine of gratitude, journaling, exercising, practicing kindness. The second it’s not scheduled in somewhere, it gets forgotten or overlooked, or it gets bumped out of a busy day.

P: Exactly, yes.

M: So, focus on the small things. I’ve just finished reading the Atomic Habits by James Clear and something that is so valuable that he says, is when you’re starting new habits, make them small. Make them so easy that you have to trip over yourself not to do them, right?

P: Ha ha, I like that.

M: So if you want to be a runner, run for three minutes to start with and do that until it drives you crazy and you have to do four, and then push it to five. So easy, to just write once a week, something you’re grateful for and set an alarm on Sunday nights, or whatever it is that you pick. But make it small. And so when you say focus on the small things, I know that’s not exactly what you were talking about, Pete.

P: I still agree.

M: But when it comes to a lot of the positive psychology interventions we talk about make them small so that there’s really no excuse not to do them.

P: Brilliant. Love that. That’s really, really good. Well done. Ok, three more.

Clean.

Do some cleaning, go and clean out the closet.

M: Why am I being punished? What’s going on here?

P: [Laugh] No, it’s really good because it ticks so many boxes.

M: Hold on, declutter? Or clean?

P: Declutter, that’s a very [Marie] Kondo-esque way of looking at it.

M: I’m down with the declutter.

P: The cleanings, brilliant, like I actually love it like going and cleaning the bathroom. You’re in this moment. I’ve just gotta get it clean. And you can be really obsessive about cleaning. So, it ticks a lot of boxes. It takes your mind out of the situation. It gives you a task. It distracts you. It gives you a sense of achievement at the end of it. There’s a lot of positive things about doing some domestic cleaning.

M: OK, alright.

P: Getting fluff off the carpet in the hallway when you’re vacuuming. You’ll be thankful when you walk on it the next day [laugh].

M: I hear what you’re saying, actually, and I think the bit that sold it for me was that feeling of satisfaction and also the focus of doing a task and completing it. Yeah, all right.

P: If you’re feeling absolutely shit go and clean something.

M: Alright, I’ll give you that.

P: Okay, alright.

Balance your social media.

M: Mhm.

P: Beware the social demon and know that I’m aware of this, Marie, be careful of going on social media and getting caught in the scroll moment.

M: Yeah or mindlessly doing stuff. I think one of the best things that I’ve done since moving up to Tamworth is I’ve got myself a morning routine. As I said, I’ve been reading atomic habit, so making some changes and I have forbidden myself from looking at my phone until mid-morning when I have a cup of coffee.

P: Oh, brilliant. That’s awesome.

M: So I get up, I do some exercise, I write, and then I start work. And so all of those, and have some breakfast. All of those things happen without any social media or other things pulling me away.

P: Your friends, a friend of mine, started this years ago. He started charging his phone in another other room so that he didn’t wake up and reach for his phone. So important people get off the bloody devices.

[Laughter]

P: Alright, last one, last one.

Get out of town.

Now this is difficult for some people. It’s very difficult, especially if you’re in lock down, such as our lovely friends down in Melbourne, who I feel very, very painful for every time I reference them. But if you can get out if you can change your surroundings.

I’m going to quote here “[As little as] a 20 to 30% increase in blue space visibility– What’s blue space Marie?

M: The ocean or a lake or river? Any water? A large body of water.

– could shift someone from moderate distress into a lower category”.

That’s from the BBC Future’s website. So get out of town people. Go and change your perspective. Get out of the concrete jungle go and get into nature, do some forest bathing.

M: [Laugh] Nice. Alright, we might wrap it up there. So what was our conclusion Pete, can you be happy during Covid?

P: I say, yes, you’ve got to put the work in, but you could do it.

M: Look, I think that there are certain people, so they say that there’s three parts to being happy.

One is low negative affect like so if you’ve lost your job or really struggling, then bad luck, sorry. I think the most you can hope for is to be neutral and to put in the work to just grit and bear what is not a great situation for you.

And then there’s positive affect, and there’s probably not a lot of positive affect going on right now.

P: No.

M: But there’s still things that we can look forward to and see, even if you can’t be going to weddings or overseas trips, etcetera, all that stuff stopped.

So that then leaves the people who aren’t going through particularly tough times. I think those people can be relatively happy.

P: You’ve got to take control… the thing is it comes down to doing the work you have control over your reactions and your perspective and if you exert that control and take ownership of it, yes, I believe you can be happy during a global pandemic.

M: Well, on that note, I’m going to say Thank you for joining us today. If you want to hear more please remember to subscribe and like this podcast and remember can find us at www.marieskelton.com. Which is a site about how to find balance, happiness and resilience in your life. You can also send in questions or propose a topic.

P: Ooh, please propose a topic. We love this, give me something to do.

M: Or reach out if you have people you’d like us to talk to or interview.

P: Oh, yes. Definitely and if you like our little show, we would love for you to leave a comment or rating to help us out.

M: Yeah, that would make us happy.

P: [Laugh] until next time people, choose happiness.

[Happy Exit Music]

Related content: Read Moving On article 5 Ways to Overcome the COVID Blues, listen to our Podcast: What is Happiness? (E1)

The Good and the Bad of Stress (E33)

by

Happiness for Cynics

In this week’s episode, Marie and Pete discuss some studies on stress, uncovering that stress can be both good and bad, but it’s all in how you perceive it.

Transcript

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

P: And I am Peter Furness, a bringer of bingo, lover of lingo and a passer of Pinot Grigio.

M: Ew.

P: [Laugh] Yeah, ew… 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 alcohol is no longer numbing your pain.

P: Or you want to laugh, love and live like a voracious beast.

M: Or you just want to know what all the fuss is about.

P: [Singing] Then this is the place to be.

M: Because this week we’re talking about…

P: Stress!

[Dun, Dun, Duunnnn!]

[Happy Intro Music]

M: Alright, we’re talking about stress, and in particular… and the reason we talk about stress is because it is the complete opposite of happiness, really.

P: Oh, is it?

M: Well, not the opposite. You’ve got all these negative things, and stress is one of them. And they really do impact your ability to be happy.

P: Yes, I’ll agree.

M: So that’s why we’re talking about happiness, ah we’re not talking about happiness-

P: Stress?

M: – we’re talking about stress. Yes, and there are two talks that have shaped my thinking for this episode. So, one of them is by Kell… One of them is by Kelly Mc. [Stumbling over words.]

P: [Laughter and clapping]

M: Damn it. This is just not happening. One of them is by Kelly McGonigal, and she’s a health psychologist, and her 2013 Ted Global Talk is called How to Make Stress Your Friend. And I highly recommend that one and the other one. And again, I just feel bad that I know I’m butchering these people’s name.

P: [Laugh.]

M: I don’t know any way around this.

P: Well unless you’re going to research linguistics. Then you’re just gonna, you know have a bash?

M: Yep. So, Madhumita Murgia is a journalist, editor and speaker with expertise in the fields of science, health and technology, and her 2015 Ted talk [How Stress Affects Your Brain] was all about how stress affects the brain. So..

P: Science, science, science.

M: Yes. Do you expect anything less from me Pete?

P: No definitely not.

M: So they’ve both got different ways of looking at stress in the brain and there’s two things I wanted to talk about. Madhumita talks about how stress isn’t always a bad thing. It could be handy for a burst of energy and focus like when you’re playing sport, there’s people cheering for you and it’s the final or when you’ve got a deadline looming at work and you’ve got to get this done right?

P: Yep.

M: And stress can be a real motivator. I don’t know if you’ve felt that.

P: It’s a lever. It’s a definite lever.

M: Yep.

P: It pushes you forward.

M: Absolutely. So stress can be a really good thing, right?

P: Mm Hmm.

M: Or have you ever had to speak in public? And you’re not quite comfortable speaking in public.

P: Yes.

M: Your capillaries open up, your heart beats faster and you just feel alive, right. So stress can be an amazingly good thing, right?

P: Yes.

M: But what Madhumita talks about is how, when it’s continuous, it actually begins to change your brain.

P: Ok, so our brain synapses and neurons change?

M: Yes. So if you are in a war zone, for instance, which is kind of the epitome of bad stress.

P: Well that’s the big end of it.

M: Right? Like, there is day to day first world, what you and I experience. And then there’s war. If you’re living in a war zone and you’re constantly worried about how to feed your family-  

P: How to survive.

M: – whether or not you’re going to live, whether or not you’ll be bombed with all of the horrible things that you and I can only guess at.

P: Yes.

M: That is a level of constant and deep stress, and that fundamentally changes the way your brain works. And there’s actually some really good research from a lot of the Holocaust survivors and people who lived through World War II.

P: I’m thinking World War II London straightaway, as soon as you said that.

M: About stress and how people react and how it changes the genetics and kids that were born from people who went through that level of stress. There is so much psychological, physiological and physical impact.

P: And change of behaviour, fundamental patterns that come about because you’ve lived through that experience.

M: Absolutely. There’s a great one that I’m thinking of from a physical point of view where people were starving, they were there, honestly, starving. They couldn’t get access to food. They were eating cardboard to just put something in their stomach and their children, children who are born around that time they were born with changes in their genes and make up that meant that they held onto any nutrient and any carbon and fat. And so they’ve all got obesity problems, so their parents were starving, and these people cannot lose weight. They cannot, because their bodies have been taught to hold on to everything.

P: Absolutely everything.

M: Yeah, and again the mind does the same sort of thing. So stress can be such a positive thing in short bursts, but when you experience it over a long period of time it can have the opposite effect.

P: Does it matter about the level of stress in terms of the perception of intensity? So you’re talking about the war zones and so forth, but are we talking about the day to day stuff.

M: Well, look I picked wars as an example, but the research and Madhumita is talking about what you and I experience as day to day stress.

P: So, first worlders?

M: Yeah, like commutes and crappy bosses, making rent and all of those day to day [stresses], making sure that you answer all the e-mails in your inbox in a time that is deemed socially acceptable. And all of that stuff is day to day pressure, and a lot of people have talked about burnout. And The World Health Organisation has definitely labeled that as a concern in the 21st century. But that level of stress is also having a negative impact on people’s brain.

P: Mm. OK. How much do we control that? How much can we take control of that interpretation of stress? Because I know where you’re heading with this. [Laugh]

M: I love that question, Pete. Why thank you.

P: [Laugh]

M: It’s like we discussed this episode beforehand.

[Laughter]

M: So, Kelly McGonigal, the person who was talking about beginning the episode she has done a whole bunch of research into how we need to start seeing stress as a good thing.

P: Exactly.

M: So she talks about a study which tracked 30,000 adults, that is a huge study. So when you normally talk about studies, there’s 100, 200, 500 maybe 1000 people that you’re looking at.

P: Yep, most study groups.

M: 30,000 adults in the United States, and they followed them for 8 years.

P: Wow.

M: Huge, huge study. And they started by asking people how much stress have you experienced in the last year? They also asked, do you believe that stress is harmful for your health? And then they use public death records to find out who died.

P: Oh, Wow.

M: Right? Let’s cut to the chase. If stress is going to impact your heart health your everything, your brain it’s going to change you at a fundamental level and lead to poor outcomes, we’re talking death here, right?

P: Yep.

M: Okay. And what they found was people who experience a lot of stress in the previous year had a 43% increased risk of dying. But, here’s the but.

P: [Laugh]

M: That was only true for the people who also believed that stress is harmful for your health.

P: So stress can be beneficial?

M: Only if you believe it is.

P: It’s about our perception.

M: Absolutely. This is the key!

P: [Laugh]

M: Now, obviously, we’re talking about a sample of 30,000 US people in a normal period.

P: Yes.

M: Now, I still, there’s no science to back this up, but I still believe that war is a whole other, you know kettle of fish.

P: It is. But..

M: There’s so much for us to learn. We’re not in war time in Australia here, and America isn’t either. There’s no more happening in America, so in a lot of first world countries where this research would apply, well you could say that it should apply, the way that you perceive stress will have an impact on whether or not it is negative.

P: Absolutely.

M: Or positive.

P: Absolutely, couldn’t agree more.

M: Yep.

P: And it’s really funny that I came across this through the teachings of the Dalai Lama.

M: Oh, we’re back on this again.

[Laughter]

M: Tell me more.

P: This is a Buddhist doctrine. It’s this capacity for human intelligence and to develop determination and use it in a positive way. It’s how we perceive our reactions to events. It’s not necessarily the event itself that is negative. It’s our perception of it, and if we can change the way that we react, we are reactionary beings and if we react in a certain way, that predicates stress and that predicates a whole series of biological and physiological changes.

M: Yes.

P: But if we change that perception, if we flip that switch and find some sort of way to create a positivity around it, see it as an opportunity to change, interpret it as a lever for intelligence, for education, then perhaps we can flip the switch on stress. Oh my God! That’s a, that’s a sound bite!

M: We can flip the switch on stress. OK, we’ll be quoting you on that.

P: Done.

M: Yes, I couldn’t agree more. There’s one thing even before I tripped over all this positive psychology stuff and when I truly was the cynic that we portray in all of our advertising, which I always believed the worry-ings of no one. If something was going to happen, it was going to happen.

P: Yes.

M: Stressing about it and worrying about it didn’t serve anyone.

P: I couldn’t agree more. Worry doesn’t serve anybody.

M: Don’t worry about breaking the egg. You deal with the broken egg, if it happens, right?

P: Yep. Or you take steps to prevent the egg from breaking.

M: Absolutely. But really, you just keep cooking.

P: [Laugh]

M: If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen right?

P: Yep.

M: And that has always been something that I’ve believed in. I maybe had too much of a lazy air.. and see what happens.

P: Approach?

M: Yeah, and nearly dying kind of makes you reassess how carefree you have been.

P: Yeah, true. But in some ways that that blissful, I’m going to say ignorance, but you’re going to say arrogance in that respect, it gives you a certain ability to deal with things in different way. If you’re not in a highly stressed, reactionary state, something bad happens and you’re like ‘Okay, all right, let’s go with this. Let’s see where this leads.’ You can actually deal.

M: ‘I can cope with it.’

P: Yeah. ‘I can cope with it.’

M: ‘I can cope.’ So, I think again, like we’ve spoken about in the past, it’s about feeling the pain and feeling the negative emotions that comes with bad things happen. But then, knowing that it’s a temporary state.

P: And understanding there’s a path out of it, if you can find it. And there are certain things that happen where the path is not obvious and we’re talking grief. We’re talking the loss of a loved one. You know you’re going to stay in that for a little while. We’ve talked about that before in other episodes.

M: But there is an out, and that’s not if you can find it, it’s when, when it happens.

and you might need help.

P: Definitely, and that’s the case of human nature we are reactionary beings and we react in a certain way. If we can control that reaction or look at the different possibilities of that reaction. Then perhaps we can lessen the effects of stress.

M: Absolutely yep, absolutely. So to circle back to that study. So they found that people who experienced a lot of stress but did not view stress as harmful were no more likely to die. I really want to circle back to that the physical effects of how you perceive the world.

P: Oh the world.

M: How you perceive being victimised, being not able to cope, being passive. It’s like seeing yourself as a leaf in the wind versus in control and..

P: Being able to ride the wind?

M: Right. That perception fundamentally changes you physically to the point that you do or don’t die.

P: I could see why it would change the way that your brain works, how your synapses work the access of pathways of thought processes and so forth.

M: For a cynic, this is such a big leap.

P: Yeah, right.

M: Such a big leap.

P: What is it that stops you from being able to make that jump?

M: How I perceive the world is going to make me die, younger or not. [Psht.]

P: You just don’t believe it? Fundamentally don’t believe it?

M: Well, yeah.

P: Wow.

M: It’s all.. yes.

P: [Laugh] and then it isn’t.

M: It isn’t the science shows [it]. 30,000 people over eight years, that’s huge.

P: That’s a decent study.

M: That is a good study, that is, yeah, that passes.

P: It’s not anecdotal.

M: Yep, and it’s not so qualitative that three people were interviewed in depth, over 8 years.

P: And there were these differentiating factors.

M: Yeah, absolutely. So, the lowest risk of dying of anyone in this study, including people who had little stress, was people who believe stress is positive. So this is actually the next big thing. So stress is bad, is what we’re saying. If you think it’s bad.

P: Yep. If you can[‘t] flip that switch.

M: If you think stress is good, it has no impact on you whatsoever, even if it’s prolonged, repeated year after year, ongoing stress.

P: And I’m thinking of a personal story here of my lovely adopted Nan McSweeney, who was 103 when she died. Dear old Nan McSweeney, she –

M: – Tell me her secret!

P: [Laugh]

M: 103! My grandma’s 95 and I’m cheering for her.

P: Yeah?

M: Yep.

P: So Nan McSweeney. She was a very devout Catholic woman. Incredibly devout, she was actually the last known survivor to have personally met Mother Mary MacKillop in Australia. So she had this amazing faith and she clung to it, and she let that drive her life in many ways so that when stress did come up think bad things happened. This wasn’t a wealthy woman. [She] wasn’t a woman who had an easy life. She was a cattle farmer in Glenn Innes for most of her life. She would give it up to God. She would give it up to a higher power and have her trust that I’m meant to endure, whatever the challenge is but I know I can come out the other side of it and it was one of things that she gave to me. Now I, I was an anti-religious person when I was young, 21 year old in college and having every Sunday dinner with Nan McSweeney.

M: You still are. Both of us. Both of us are. That’s the premise behind our book, Self-Care is Church for Non-Believers.

P: [Laugh]

M: You can buy it from October.

P: [Laugh] Available on iTunes!

M: No, not iTunes. Amazon. Available on Amazon.

P: [Laugh] Getting back to the point. She had this wonderful resilience of like, ‘oh well, on we go’ and that reminds me of the attitude of the blitz in London and why the English are so stoic and they still to this day, they believe that a cup of tea will solve every problem.

M: It does.

P: It does because there’s a certain –

M: If you believe then it does.

P: There’s a control. There’s an element of control there. ‘I’ll make a cup of tea, we’ll sit down and we’ll talk about it’ and everyone buys into that. Imagine you’ve had this massive argument with your husband and you’re ready to kill each other. The French don’t do it, they actually go through it with knives and pistols and things and then have sex afterwards but that’s all fine.

M: Oh, South Americans, that’s a whole different.

P: Oh, yeah, whole other thing. But the British they go ‘I’m going to make a pot of tea’, and it’s this weird, wonderful sort of ‘I can control the tea’ and we’re going to sit down and we’ll have tea and through the tea we’ll find a solution because we’ll take that moment and there’s a belief in the process that I have control over one little element.

M: It’s all in how you perceive. And in a way, I think it’s kind of a shame that we’ve had such a good run.

P: Yeah, we’re victims of, victims of our own opulence.

M: Since WWII.

P: Yes.

M: Because we don’t have resilience. We don’t and we’re then tripping over normal, everyday life.

P: Influences.

M: People have injuries and disappointments and things that happened in their life that aren’t how they planned or wanted and we’re so not equipped for it.

P: Thrown by it.

M: So not equipped to deal with that, because where we’ve given this false sense of control over life nowadays.

P: Yes and then we go see them with their hands going ‘Oh, I can’t control anything!’

M: Yeah, absolutely. And there’s a few really good books, Homo Deus [by Yuval Noah Harari], and what is it? Guns… [Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond]. Anyway, [books] that show that there’s this false sense that we can control the randomness of life nowadays that we all have.

P: Yeah.

M: And so it really takes by surprise when it’s not actually something we can control.

P: But that’s the whole point and that’s what I go back to the ancient teachings are like it’s not about control.

M: Yes.

P: It’s about you have to give yourself over to these elements and go with them. But learn to find some control in the elements that you can. So you know a Buddhist monk would go to their meditation or a Catholic would go to their prayer. An English mum would go to her pot of tea. I cook.

M: And in the 21st century you would argue meditation and mindfulness have a place to combat stress when against too much?

P: Absolutely, Yeah, definitely.

M: Yeah, and I haven’t really bought into the meditation stuff.

P: We keep pushing this point.

M: Yeah, yeah. So maybe one day I’ll tip over the edge.

P: I’m going to sit you down and chain you up.

M: For me, it’s exercise.

P: Oh, yep.

M: I just need a good exercise, like a 30 minute run or a gym session and it re-centres me and I sleep well that night as a result. Like if I’m mentally stressed the physical exhortation balances me out.

P: That also comes down to a physiological [response], because it’s getting rid of your cortisol levels. It’s using up your adrenaline that’s in your body. It’s helping to dissipate those switched on elements and take you to a place of more calm. ‘OK, now I can switch off let go’, which is the essence of meditation.

M: Yep, what-evs. Right, we’re out of time.

P: [Laugh] Here we go with that one. We’ve got English tea parties.

[Laughter]

M: Okay, so stress is good but bad is the –

P: – it’s all about your perception. How you perceive stress is the key.

M: Look, I think that a lot of this again I’m going to summarise a lot of what we’ve talked about, we’re up to Episode 30 something or other and again what I keep learning from this fabulous science of positive psychology is that I have so much control.

P: Yes, we do have control.

M: We do have control.

P: We have the tools we need to wake up and use them.

M: Yep and sometimes you might want to burrow down and just let the emotion rule.

P: Yep, I agree.

M: But then again, you don’t have to always be in that place, right?

P: No.

M: You’ve got control over whether you choose –

P: Take action people.

M: – Choose happiness. I hate to say it cause it’s a T shirt slogan. But there’s so much behind that.

P: I agree.

M: Yeah.

P: That’s why we say it.

M: Yep. All right, So..

P: if you like this podcast, then please subscribe and like us on your favourite platform and remember that we have all our information on www.marieskelton.com. Org?

M: .com Pete obviously doesn’t go there ever…

P: It’s written in the website browser thingy that I click and goes ‘Yes, straight to’.

[Laughter]

P: Where we publish all our research and articles and links from our podcast episodes.

M: Thank you for joining us.

P: Choose Happiness.

[Happy Exit Music]

Related content: Read Moving On article How to Build Your Resilience With Mindfulness and Meditation, listen to our Podcast: The Power of Meditation (E9)

Bringing Altruism Into Your Life (E32)

by

Happiness for Cynics

This week, Marie and Pete discuss altruism – being kind and giving to others. They also join the global kindness movement by trying to complete the tasks on the Altruistic August 2020 calendar by Action For Happiness.

Transcript

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

P: And I am Peter Furness, a curator of kindness, a calibrator of creativity and conversational cacophonist. 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 alcohol is no longer numbing your pain.

P: Or you want to laugh, love and live like a voracious beast.

M: Or you just want to know what all the fuss is about.

P: Then this is the place to be.

M: Because this week we are talking about altruism.

[Happy Intro Music]

M: So, Pete, this week we’re talking about altruism.

P: I had to look that up in the dictionary. [Laugh]

M: Oh really? Oh, yeah I feel good because you are always spitting out like names of body parts that I just…

P: [Laugh] No, well I did know what altruism meant. But I do remember coming across the term about six months ago and going ‘Oh, I wonder what that is? And then I realised I’ve been doing it all my life.

[Laughter]

M: So the reason that this came up was that there is, and there’s a great website actually called Action for Happiness. And if you look it up, it’s www.actionforhappiness.org and they’ve got great resources all in positive psychology, and what we’ve talked about. There’s acts of kindness as well and a bunch of sites out there that do some great work in the positive psychology space.

P: Yep

M: And I came across this action calendar for August, called Altruistic August 2020.

P: Has a nice ring to it.

M: It sure does. And so, of course, I thought, great, this is a good challenge. We’re going into second base of lock downs in Australia. 2020 can go…

P: [Boing] (possible rude gesture)

M: Mmhhm.

P: Delete, delete, delete.

M: I need something to focus on and need something to direct my energy away from just how crappy it is to be going back into another lock down, particularly for our friends in Melbourne and western Sydney. And just like that, that cleaver is about to drop. You can feel it’s just hanging.

P: And people are rushing to try and make sure they make the most of everything right now because it’s almost as if the apocalypse is upon us.

M: Which is the worst thing you can do, like four pubs in one weekend?

P: Yeah.

M: Anyway that’s a whole other thing.

P: [Laugh]

M: So I think that this was kind of a way for me to just grab hold of my emotions and my energy a little bit, that doesn’t mean to say-

P: You’re focusing on your energy? Marie how positively alternative of you.

M: I’m not talking airy fairy energy.

P: [Laugh]

M: I don’t want to spend time worrying. I want to spend time proactively doing things that will come back to me in a good way.

P: Investing?

M: Yeah investing. Investing time, not energy.

P: ‘I just need to get my rose quartz crystal.’

M: Time not energy in the like ‘I can see your aura.’

P: Hey, aura reading is real.

M: Mmhmm… So I sent you this calendar and went let’s do this.

P: Yep [Laugh]

M: So that was a week ago, so Pete.

P: Which oddly enough I had the instant reaction ‘oh crap!’ [Laugh]

M: So Pete, tell me how have you done for last week?

P: Yeah. Wonderful. Wonderful. Yeah, really good.  [Laugh] I’m involved in altruistic behaviour all day. The first thing I say to everybody when they walk in the door is ‘how are you? What can we do for you today?

M: Not cutting it.

P: Oh shit.

M: This is about going above and beyond right?

P: You mean I’ve got to do more?

M: Here’s the thing, it kind of feels like more because we live in such a demanding world. Until Covid, things kind of calmed a little bit in Covid and I think we started to look at whether the demanding world we live in was really all that.

P: It definitely caused us to reassess.

M: Yeah.

P: If it was worth the, if it was worth all that hassle.

M: Yeah. So there’s definitely a recalibration happening.

P: Yep, I agree.

M: I think, around the world. But for us in Sydney, I think that this was a, I think, that we could do and could add in if we committed to it.

P: It’s a proactive action steps, so it’s something that you can follow along, you can make it like a challenge to see what comes of it. To see what comes out of being altruistic and committing to doing 30 days of altruism. It’s actually, it is a bit of a challenge is a lot harder than you think.

M: Mmhhmm.

P: To be cognitive? No, that’s the wrong word.

M: Consciously?

P: Consciously investing in altruism is very interesting, and I do have an example.

M: So I have done the last seven days.

P: Mmm, okay.

M: And it has surprised me how little of an imposition it’s been on my life. And it’s felt good.

P: Fundamentally.

M: It felt good.

P: It costs you nothing to be a little…

M: It cost me nothing and really hasn’t really taken much time, either. Let’s let’s go through some of the week one.

P: Yes.

M:

[Day 1:] Choose to be kind to others and yourself all the month.

So day one is just about committing. Day one they’re really not even saying do anything except say ‘Ok, fine. I’m going to do it.’

P: Decide that you’re going to commit.

Alright Tick.

M: Tick.

I came in on day two and went ‘oh I’ve already done it!’

P: [Laugh]

M: Number 2

[Day 2:] Send a positive message to someone you can’t be with.

P: I did that, I did that one.

M: You see that’s really easy actually, with social media, it was just a really good slide into altruism here.

P: It was a forward to someone in Turkey who’s stranded in Turkey and can’t come back.

M: Aww. We miss you.

P: We miss you, come back.

M: I’m sure he’s not listening.

P: [Laugh]

M: Beautiful photographer. [Laugh] Anyway, yes, OK, lovely. Number three, Monday, the third of August.

[Day 3:] Treat everyone you interact with as though they are a friend.

P: Mmm.. that’s a challenging one.

M: This was really easy –

P: Oh really?

M: Because I didn’t leave the house.

P: [Derisive noise] so who are you going to talk to, you’re cat?

M: Tick

P: [Laugh] It’s a good one to try, though, because when you’re going, I see it all the time. And this is, this is a little bit of a personal soapbox moment. Service people, when we interact with service people. We get into the habit of not engaging with people who are the checkout chick or I want to say barista but that’s just so…

M: Unless you’ve been there, I think.

P: The only reason, is that I have a 12 year relationship so it’s very close. They’ve seen me naked? Everybody has seen me naked, don’t think you’re anything special. But it is this thing of the chick behind the counter at woolies and you forget that, that person is there, especially now, with all the scanning and walking through K-Mart when I picked up some cards this week. It was like I had to look at the person who was indicating the next teller for me to go to. And I had to go ‘thank you.’ And that’s all it is. [Click]

M: It’s so funny. Nice click. It’s so funny though, when you’re on the flip side and a person does that to you and it takes you by surprise because you get you end up being like ‘Hi, How are you’, like in that in that sing song, it’s fake, but it’s not fake. Like you’re in, you’re in retail mode, right? You know that your job is to be happy and pleasant to people and respectful.

P: A service role.

M: Yeah, it is. And that is what it is. And sometimes your feeling it and sometimes you’re faking it, and that’s fine. But then someone looks you in the eye and says, How are you doing?

P: Yeah

M: And they take the time and you’re like, and what would you like? Oh, oh, yeah I’m  Okay, Thanks. Let me think about this. So really, I think that can really just make someone’s day feel less like a robotic.

P: Definitely.

M: And making them stop and go ‘not everyone thinks that I’m just someone to serve them’.

P: Yep, definitely.

M: And I think unless you’ve worked in retail or

P: Even if you’ve worked in retail. I think it’s a good, gentle reminder we all get in that mode where I don’t want to interact with people, I’m having a hard day, I’m just going to focus and push on through. And I think maybe we forget that that has an impact on people around us.

M: And let’s really be clear here. These are the people who have been deemed essential workers –

P: Yes.

M: – during this time. We’ve really got to look long and hard as a society at these essential workers who are all minimum wage a lot of the time and who put their life on the line in order to keep things running around here.

P: It’s not necessarily just the medical people. It’s the person that brings the groceries from the farmers. You know, those sorts of jobs which have been so looked over.

M: Essential, essential. The delivery drivers.

P: And are now being dubbed as essential.

M: Anyway. Again, we digress.

P: [Laugh]

M: So, I actually, I have ordered a bunch of stuff online to set up our new place. I bought one of those robot vacuums by the way, we’ll talk about that another time.

P: Is the cat sitting on it?

M: Not yet, but I think I want a placer on it, so I could get some good You tube videos. Anyway. So the way that all the orders, so I ordered five things and they’ve all been delivered separately. So I am actually getting to know my posty.

P: Oh, OK.

M: And she’s lovely, yes. So, I will take a tick for that. Even though I didn’t do it that day.

P: Oh, all right.

M: So the next day was:

[Day 4:] Spend time wishing for other people to be free from suffering.

P: That’s a big one.

M: And I did actually take, only five minutes, but I took some time, you know, this week our colleagues in Melbourne went into lock down, and I’ve definitely seen that it’s hit a lot of them hard. It’s hit a lot of them hard and I’ve got colleagues who are single parents who were trying to work, and now they’ve got to teach their kids at the same time. It’s just not doable. You can’t work and teach.

P: Yep.

M: So and what are their options? What are their options? No one has an answer to that.

P: No.

M: So there’s a lot of people that are feeling that lock down, I think. So all my thoughts and well wishes we’re going out to these people.

P: Let’s pause on that one a little bit Muz. What was the result of that, your thoughts? What did that bring about? Did that bring about anything later in the day?

M: So the action that I was giving was to spend time wishing for other people to be free from suffering. And I chose to direct my thoughts to those Melbourne people and I actually took action through the latter half of the week on some of that and reached out to them and just checked in.

P: There we go, I think that’s the leverage. It creates an actionable step because it’s in your conscience. You’re putting something in your, in your focus. The camera focuses on something and you bring about in action because physically put it there in your conscious mind.

M: Yep, and so, yeah, I did reach out to a couple of people in particular who I had a gut feeling were trying their best to hold everything together but feeling the stress and the pressure. Yeah, definitely. All right. So,

Day 5:  Smile and be friendly, even when physical distancing.

P: Oh, I had a great one of that this week. I was walking, I was getting on my bike to go home, and I park out the front of my work, and I have to ride along like one pathway to get onto the bike lane to go home. And I’m a considerate cyclist, you know, I’m not going to bash through a whole group of people. And I was very slowly, I was on my bike and I have my light on and this gentleman was in front of me and he tuned when he saw my light and he said “oh, sorry.” And I said, “No, no, no, you’re fine.” And as I rode past he said “You have yourself a good evening.” And as I passed I said “I will!” [Laugh]

M: I love it. I love it. I really do. I feel like we don’t have enough of those little interactions.

P: I think they’re coming back.

M: I do.

P: I do think that… our reliance on technology and our big city living, especially in the big cities. It’s like head down, charge on through. Don’t register just get home. We’ve lost a little bit of that now because we have had a relative experience that is a crisis for want of a better word on that brings people together. The same thing happened after World War II.

M: People are re-awakening.

P: It is because, it’s that whole relevance of, it’s not that important if I get home in five minutes as opposed to ten minutes if it’s going to cost someone else some time or some happiness.

M: So many people are writing about this now. If you read the opinion and letters to the editor and columns, right now, all the big media. So many people are on this recalibration, re-imagining what life should be, we’re questioning.

P: I’m fully in support of it its human interaction we’re, we’re valuing human interaction again. And that’s possibly because we’ve had many months without it.

M: We’re valuing all the positive psychology teachings, everything we discuss on this podcast people and now rediscovering, cooking with your family.

P: Mmm eating with your family, perhaps sharing a meal.

M: Yep, yep. Doing puzzles, playing card games.

I was read- I was watch – reading, watching.

P: [Laugh]

M: Listening, listening to Michelle Obama’s podcast this week.

P: Ah, yes.

M: And she starts with Barack Obama. So Barack has taught the girls Spades. They never would have stopped to do that pre Covid.

P: Right.

M: But they’re loving it and they’re mastering the game. And so they’re having some great bonding moments. I think a lot of parents are experiencing that, but also there’s people out there without children who are rediscovering gardening.

P: Yes.

M: Rooftop gardening, for instance Pete.

P: Love it, yeah, it’s going well. The good old Marjoram is going off, the Chervil didn’t survive. But that was the only one out of 12. The Chervil was the only one that didn’t survive.

M: There you go. So rediscovering cooking, gardening and just the things that help you slow down.

P: And that’s key.

M: Enjoy the moment.

P: And being mindful that brings all that stuff that we talked.

M: All that stuff, spending more time with family. My husband, Francis, and I played a board game the other day for the first time in ages. So I think we’ve again digressed.

P: [Laugh]

M: This is what happens when you give me a Martini.

P: I didn’t give you a Martini.

M: [Laugh]

P: I’m not an enabler.

M: Okay. Smile and be friendly. Friday.

[Day 6]: Thank someone you’re grateful to and tell them why.

P: Ooh.

M: I did this one today it was nice, it was a nice moment.

P: I actually got one yesterday. Someone who I haven’t seen in a long time sent me a written letter through the Post.

M: Oh, I love stationary and actual written.

P: It was incredible. So I haven’t gotten a letter for so long and it arrived and I read it and I was so chuffed that I went and wrote them a reply. Haven’t posted it yet, but she’ll get it in next week.

M: The problem is that you’ve actually got to go to the post office and pick up the stamp.

P: Which is great.

M: Stamps! Who buys stamps.

P: I know, it’s great. I love it.

M: I’ve got so much stationery. I never use it. I really do need to in the altruistic August, actually write a letter. Proper note to someone.

P: Yeah. So altruism in and of itself, let’s get a little bit more definition in here.

M: Sure, so that was Week one [6 days]. We’ve got three minutes left with this podcast We’ve not, so I fully encourage, I wanna push this one through so that we get it out in all this. But I fully encourage everyone to pick up this calendar. So again, it’s at actionforhappiness.org and to set yourself a challenge for 31 days and it comes back to you. But let us know, Pete now, about the science.

P: Well, it’s not necessarily the science but the definition and altruism is about doing things for others and it does have the effect of enabling you and making you feel positive. It’s a benefit to the individual at a cost to oneself. It’s going beyond just thinking about something. It’s actually taking action.

M: Yep.

P: It can be, as you said, donating blood and things like that.

M: I’m determined. So heard on the radio, they need blood going this weekend.

P: So those sorts of actions can come out of it. Recent work suggests that humans behave altruistically because it is emotionally rewarding.

M: Yes. So, if you’re feeling low right now, if you’re going back into a funk because it sucks, Covid sucks right now and we’re about to go back into this second lock down in Sydney. They’re already there in Melbourne. And just so you know, you book online, you can get a pass to leave your house in Melbourne to go give blood.

P: Oh wow, wow.

M: So if you’re stir crazy in your house right now. You can safely get in your car, go donate blood and come home and that is allowed and you won’t be fined if your stopped.

P: Wow, that’s pretty amazing.

M: So you can’t leave to do exercise, you can’t leave to do anything else,

P: But to do something altruistic.

M: Yeah, but you’re saving someone’s life.

P: I am going to talk a little bit very briefly in the last few minutes about pathological altruism.

M: Ooh.

P: So you can go too far with altruism and there’s a lot of examples about this.

M: Tell me more, tell me more. I am so not in danger of this by the way.

P: [Laugh]

M: Talking about giving blood like I’m some kind of Saint, I’m so not, so, so not. This is a good exercise for me to be doing but tell me, people go too far?

P: It is something to be concerned about because you can think that your doing something for the benefit of others when actually you’re not, you’re causing harm. We’ve got several examples of this over history. We’ve got like, the Crusades for example, the people who went on the Crusades. They were determined that we’re bringing the word of God to another culture when really they’re just created war and famine for 400 years.

M: Yep

P: That’s a classic example.

M: Oh! Can I tell you one from my time studying anthropology?

P: Yep.

M: Oh, I love this story. I tell it to anyone who’ll listen, but it stuck with me since studying Anthropology at University. So Western companies went into Africa to try and help them, particularly through the eighties. There was famine and AIDS hit not long after that as well. So there was so much going on and they needed help. And we as the “western saviors” all went into, by the way if you can’t tell that I’m being sarcastic, I’m so being sarcastic, we “western saviors” thought it was our job to go in and save the African nations. And there’s a great story that we learned about, about these, I believe it was a Christian charity, but this is nothing to the religion. So they went in and they were trying to help this small town to understand contraception.

P: Yes.

M: And so they showed all the women they brought all the women into this town hall sort of place, and they were showing them condoms and how to put condoms on. So the way that they showed these women how to apply a condom was to roll them onto broomsticks. So they showed all these women how to use condoms and then moved on to the next town and the next town in the next town and a few years later they came back and unfortunately, childbirth rates had remained the same, which is relatively high. You know, 7/8 kids per couple. And they said what happened? We told you. We sent you free condoms and nothing’s changed. And they said, ‘you guys with your crazy western shaman medicine, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but rolling condoms on broomsticks has not stopped a single child from being born over the last four years. We rolled those condoms on every night, and we’re still having Children.

P: [Raucous laughter] Very true, yeah.

M: With the best intentions but maybe not the outcome.

P: Yes, exactly and that’s a nice of it.

M: Anyway again we digress.

P: It’s a good digression, it’s a good digression.

M: I will say from a research point of view that giving to others activates an area of the brain linked with contentment and the rewards cycle.

P: Oh, definitely.

M: So performing selfless acts makes you happier.

P: Easy.

M: Yep, that that’s kind of it. We’re gonna wrap up there.

P: I think that that’s a good point to wrapitup.

M: To wrap it up? Alright. I think we will.

Okay. So thank you for joining us again today. If you like our podcast, please help us out by giving us a rating on any of the major platforms. Pete’s laughing at me.

P: I’m not laughing at you.

M: But it does help.

P: It’s on iTunes, it’s on iTunes, I gotta tell them about iTunes.

M: [Laugh] And thankyou for joining us today.

P: Stay happy people.

[Happy Exit Music]

Related content: Read Moving On article Practicing Gratitude: Why and How You Should do it , listen to our Podcast: Positive Affirmations (E29)

Whoda Thought it… Money Can Buy Happiness (E31)

by

Happiness for Cynics

This week, Pete and Marie discuss a recent study which has thrown the age-old adage “Money can’t buy you happiness” on its head. Could it be true that money can buy happiness?!

Transcript

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

P:  And I’m Peter Furness, A believer in bubbles, a coercer of caper-isms and a doyen of decadence. 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: More! Then this is the place to be.

M: This week we’re discussing a recent news story, which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Money Does Buy Happiness.

P: Insert snide comment here.

[Happy Intro Music]

M: Okay, so this week we’re talking about a new study which was reported on, I first saw it in Washington Post, and it has thrown the age old adage ‘Money Can’t Buy Happiness’ on its head.

P: Cobble wash. I don’t believe it for a second.

M: I knew you’d love this one.

P: Folks, you are about to see Peter and Marie be at opposite ends of the scale.

M: [Laugh] I’m, just reporting on the news, people.

P: Yeah, yeah, you and your science.

M: So pretty much it’s not good news for the growing lower class who are being left behind due to the ever increasing wealth gap. So the study by researchers Jean and again, I’m going to mispronounce names. Oh and by the way-

P: Hoo-geh [hygge].

[Laughter]

M: – it turns out our episode a couple of weeks ago where we did, there was a disclaimer, wasn’t there Pete?

P: We did. We did say that we weren’t owning the fact that we could pronounce it correctly.

M: Yes, and the Danish have done it again and tricked us.

P: [Laugh]

M: So I have a colleague from Denmark who corrected me. It’s not ‘hoo-geh’, it’s ‘hee-geh’.

P: I still like ‘hoo-geh’.

M: [Laugh]

P: Hoooo-geh!

M: [Laugh]

P: It just makes you laugh, common. Go with me on this?

M: So anyway, this research again, apologies if I miss-pronounce your name.

This research by Jean [M] Twenge and A. Bell Cooper was published in July this … [year] by the American Psychological Association, and it shows that there’s a growing class divide in happiness in the US. So, looking at findings in a general social survey, Twenge and Cooper found a positive correlation between socio-economic status (so that’s income, education and occupational prestige) and happiness. And the positive correlation has grown steadily since the seventies, all the way til today.

P: So are they saying that with the increase in income, you have more ability to feel happiness?

M: No the self-reported happiness. People are happier when they’re earning more.

P: Okay. I’m with you on..

M: As their socio-economic status rises, so do their happiness levels.

P: Does this come back to Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs, which we mentioned before?

M: No.

P: No?

M: No.

P: Damnit, I thought I was onto something there.

M: We could go down that route, if you really want it. [Laugh]

P: Does it mean that money gives you a certain freedom to be able to look beyond the necessities and then focus on happiness. Is that what they’re saying?

M: Look, I think you could… hhmm, the study doesn’t say that, but I would definitely say that’s worth exploring.

P: Right.

M: And I think that previous studies have definitely shown that there comes a point where your basic needs are met. So that is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. So your basic needs are met and that frees you to focus on larger things like happiness.

P: This study is talking about the definite link between income or socio-economic status and the ability of happiness.

M: And happiness, not even the ability of happiness, just happiness.

P: Ok, I’m on board.

M: Yep.

P: I’m just going to put my glasses on.

M: So there you go, that was our episode. Thank you for joining us.

P: [Laughter] Oh, no. I have so many more questions here.

[Laughter]

M: So I think the really interesting thing here is that previous studies had shown that there was little link between happiness and income.

P: Okay.

M: So this is new. This is different and what we’d seen in previous incomes is that after a certain point, after your base needs are met, which many believe is about $75,000 a year, US. So after those basic needs are met, then your happiness levels don’t increase in proportion to increases in salary.

P: Oh, okay, okay.

M: So that’s what previous studies have shown.

P: Have talked about, right?

M: This study is actually saying nah. It’s all gobbledygook. Throw that out. Actually, your happiness continues to increase as you continue to earn more.

P: To a certain point or is that an exponential graph growth?

M: They’re saying it is tied and correlates the whole way through.

P: Alright, okay.

M: Keep earning more, you will be more happy.

P: Okay. All right. Let’s, let’s go forward with this. I’ve got a lot of, you know, ancient texts that might challenge you. [Laugh]

M: So I think it’s worth saying that there’s a lot that, they possibly, a lot of fringe cases that we don’t know about.

So the general social survey covers quite a few people, but obviously there’s so many different elements to this and facets to this that we could explore, and that’s what today’s episode is a little bit about. But to go back to the studies.

They say that over 40 years, the happiness levels of high wealth individuals have been consistent, whereas the happiness levels of poorer individuals have slowly declined, according to the research.

So in an interview with The Washington Post, Twenge said that the link between income and happiness is stronger now than in previous decades, so something has shifted in the last 20/30 years.

P: Hhmm. Okay.

M: Also the decrease in happiness among lower income people may be a result of rising inequality, increasing real estate values and decreased ability to pay for education.

So it’s not necessarily that the people getting more are getting happier. It’s that the people who are in the bottom income brackets are feeling less happy.

P: I would go, I would go with that. Yes, I’ll agree with that one.

M: There you go, point proven and again ‘Thankyou for joining us.’ [Laugh]

P: Hang on now, back it up Buttercup.

M: Alright, what have you got to say about this Pete?

P: I can see the reasons why the lower socio-economic status would pre-destine you to being more challenge to experiencing happiness. But is this buying into consumerism. Is it buying into the fact that we need to have materialistic things around us to be happy? Or are we talking about, I’m thinking of discarding the socio norms and discarding the house, the car, the 2. 4 Children with the dog and all that sort of stuff, having the latest television and all that sort of thing and coming back to those really basic needs of happiness that we have and finding value and joy in the small things, celebrating the small victories, finding joy in the fact that I am celebrating the fact that I can walk down the street on a sunny day.

M: All of those things that you teach people to be grateful for when you practise gratitude is what you’re getting at. And absolutely I think that’s the good news here. So if you’re not earning 75,000 year and you are living week to week and at times you wonder how you’re going to pay bills or rent etcetera. That doesn’t mean you can’t be happy.

P: Which is kind of the point that I’m getting to in a roundabout way. I don’t want listens to feel that they can’t access happiness if they’re not earning 75K a week. Because then that for me buys into the whole concept of ‘you need to focus on earning more money’, which doesn’t buy in.

M: Damn it, that was one of my tips.

P: Aagghh [Spluttering incoherently]  

M: [Laugh] We haven’t gotten to that part yet.

P: My bad. Back it up, sorry.

M: [Laugh] Make more money. Look, I absolutely agree, however. I’m going to caveat this, there is a lot of research into what makes people happy, and:

  • Having happy things in your life is one thing that increases your happiness level;
  • Getting married;
  • Getting a promotion;
  • Having good friends around; [and]
  • All those kinds of things.

Positive affect is what they call it.

P: Yes.

M: Those things increase your happiness level.

Negative affect:

So you know, not having negative health impacts, not crashing your car. Not all of those bad things that can happen in life, and they can impact your happiness levels.

P: Mm hhmm.

M: And then the third bucket. So good things happening. Bad things not happening. They both impact your happiness levels.

The third piece is really, it’s the everything else bucket, and it’s, some people argue that there’s a bit of nature versus nurture, so are you predisposed to being more optimistic than pessimistic or more of a realist, that kind of thing.

P: Okay.

M: And also, how have you been conditioned to view the world? Are you, again, just more of a happy person by nature? All of that in there. And one of the arguments in there that’s being explored recently, particularly in positive psychology, is this idea of comparing our lot in life to others. And it is –

P: Mmm. This is the whole Facebook thing.

M: Yeah, yep, that’s part of it, definitely. But if you look around at everyone else in your community and you think you’ve got it worse off than everyone else, it is really hard to be happy.

P: Okay.

M: And we’re wired and biologically set up to compare ourselves with others, and that impacts our perception of our lives and that is a huge driving factor in our happiness levels.

P: Oh, I’ve so got a quote for you. [Laugh]

M: So, I am going to say that even though I agree with you that there is so much you can do, if you’re not earning a lot of money and you’re struggling financially, to make yourself happy. It is not easy, if you compare your life to others and you see-

P: I agree, comparing is not the way, is not the route to happiness because that’s an external measurement that you’re focusing on. It’s not an internal balance. I will quote this it comes from His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. “Happy people focus on their inner growth. Unhappy people blame the outer world.” I like that because for me, that’s a real fundamental perspective of if you want to buy into happiness, then look at your internal self. Look at yourself. Don’t think about the bad things that happen to you or the bad external things that you have no control over, the elements that you can’t control. If you’re blaming that for your lack of happiness, you’re not doing the right work. You’re not looking at the perspective in the right way.

M: I kind of agree with that and then I kind of don’t.

P: Is this part of your cynical side coming out do you think?

M: No, no, this is me fully buying into the positive psychology thing. The reason I don’t is that I think one of the other amazing Dalai Lama quotes. It’s not a quote, but because I don’t read that crap-

P: Oh!! [Hyperventilating.]

M: like you do. But one of the ideas that he is famous for is that if you want to bring happiness to yourself, focus on others and I think that’s also a beautiful-

P: Ah, yes.

M: Yeah, and, and, and look, they’re not that diametrically opposed.

P: No, they’re not actually.

M: But I am. I’m such a firm believer that helping others is your path to happiness for anyone who’s having problems.

P: I agree with you but.. definitely.

M: I don’t think we’re disagreeing.

P: No, not at all but we’re looking at it in different context.

M: Yeah a different context.

P: I guess I’m coming at the point of if you’re looking at money being a precursor to your happiness.

M: You’ll never be happy.

P: Exactly. It’s like it comes back to that basic episode we did, don’t search for happiness because it’s not something you can, you can achieve.

M: Yep

P: It comes as a result of other things.

M: Yep.

P: We’re getting very esoteric here, maybe.

M: Well, no. I think that’s the whole point of an episode about money and happiness.

P: Mmm. Okay, so let’s look at more of the research, perhaps, and the justification behind this. You’re saying $75,000 is the base measurement?

M: Yep. You’re sad if you’re earning 60? what did I say? 75?

P: 75K.

M:  $74, 999 but you happy of your earning $75, 001.

[Laughter]

P: So look..

M: I think also this doesn’t take into account stress and stress can be a huge, It could be one of those negative affect elements that I was talking about.

P: That people earning a 100K are more stressed than people who are earning 60K?

M: No. Absolutely not. Stress again can be very much how you perceive it and how you react to external as well.

P: Yes, definitely.

M: However, if you have a family of four on 75 K in New York City, that money doesn’t go far-

P: Or in Sydney.

M: Or in Sydney, and that constant financial stress that you carry around day in, day out about how to educate your kids, put food on the table, pay the bills, the minimum, is going to wear on you, wear you down.

P: And I absolutely agree.

M: And so I think there’s stress when you’re a low income earner that doesn’t come with the higher income earners, necessarily.

P: Yes.

M: Now you can always overspend and spend too much and, you know, get too big a mortgage for you to manage, and you can still be financially stressed when you’re earning more. But there is definitely a financial stress of living in the lower socio economic groups.

P: I’m on board with you there.

M: That again, that doesn’t mean that you can’t implement real tactics to manage stress better to do some really good solid budgeting and mindfulness and all of those fabulous things that help you deal with stress, acknowledge it, work it out, label it and manage your stress.

P: Address the problem as opposed to not addressing it.

M: Yep, and there will be bad months and bad pay weeks and all the rest of it, unexpected bills.

But you can manage that and still work on being happy and take the kids to the park on a Saturday morning, which is a free activity rather than to Luna Park.

P: Yep.

M: Yep, where you didn’t see them for the day anyway because they were running off on rides. So I still think that it is very possible to own your own happiness. If you’re in the lower socioeconomic groups, there is just a little bit more stacked against you at times.

P: I find that an interesting perspective because my whole being recoils at the fact that I have to achieve a certain income to be able to achieve happiness. And I guess that comes from my own personal experience of being for want of a better term a down and outer in London and going okay, it’s a really expensive city, and I’ve got to make this work for me, and yet it was the most fabulous city for me at that time, and I wasn’t earning a lot of money, I was struggling to pay rent and so forth. But damn it was fun! [Laugh]

M: I did the same thing. I when I was on scholarship in the States, I spent my food money for the semester on a trip to Paris.

P: [Laugh] And then ate McDonald’s chips for the next three months?

M: 2 minute noodles, pasta… yeah.

P: And the joy that you can get out of that.

I think this is the thing, it’s about balance. It’s about, I wouldn’t like our listens to fall into the trap of thinking that they have to achieve a certain financial goal before they can even buy into happiness. I think that’s the wrong message. I’m gonna put that out there.

M: I agree.

P: But your, the research is saying…

M: The research is saying that, you know, that there is a reality to it –

P: There’s a correlation between earning more money and actually being able to experience happiness, at a more cognitive –

M: And just being happier.

P: Being happier.

M: Just being happier.

P: Mmm. My whole body recoils at that statement.

M: So if you’re financially stressed it would chip away your happiness levels. So I think it makes sense to me, perfect sense to me.

P: Well?

M: So on your bottom 10% it would be chipping away your ability to be happy.

P: Yeah… I don’t agree.

M: If you’re financially stressed? So you weren’t?

P: No. I get the financially stressed aspect of it but there comes over a certain resiliency. And maybe it’s my angel loving ways and the belief in the universe providing me with what I need. And, you know, the struggle is my goal and my gateway to a higher self and all this sort of stuff. To, even though you are in a financial stress is to take joy and to take time to appreciate the small victories and the small aspect of like, yeah, I’m having a coffee with my partner in the morning in the sunshine on the balcony and that can still bring about an amazing amount of joy. If you have your perspective and if you have the want to see temerity, then won’t it be the right word? The perspective to be able to recognise those small little joys and still celebrate them, even though you are financially stressed.

M: Yep, I agree. But without the financial stress, you would be happier more often without trying.

P: O..kay? Alright, I’ll give you that.

M: It’s like, yep. I Think we’re saying the same thing.

P: Essentially yeah, it just recoils me.

M: If you’ve got a rain cloud always hanging over your head. You can enjoy looking at the flowers in the rain, –

P: You can put your galoshes on and jump in the puddles.

M: – but eventually you go, ‘I’m really cold and I’m wet and this sucks right now’, and you pull up your socks and you get out that again tomorrow. But it’s still there. It’s always there.

P: Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, Ok. I’ll give you that.

M: Woo hoo, one win for Marie.

P: [Laugh]

M: So, apart from ‘make more money’, do you have any other tips for listeners, Pete? As the eternal optimist.

P: [Lots of Laughter] You got me to laugh so much. Oh, that’s funny. Happiness on a budget? Is that what we’re calling this?

Own the small stuff.

I think it is about mindfulness and a bit about clarity of going ‘What is it that’s going to make me joyful? And if that is walking in the sunshine when it’s sunny and walking down to the lake or the park and standing there and rejoicing in the joy off the moment, I think it’s really about experiencing the moment that for me is a great, solid to hold on to even if you are in a financial situation or you are under a budget conscious level.

Celebrate the small wins.

When you have a small win celebrate it, pat yourself on the back, buying yourself a $2 bottle of wine to celebrate a little victory, that’s great.

M: Does that exist any more?

P: In France maybe?

M: We used to get passion pop for $3.

P: [Laugh] The Coolabah goon bag.

M: I’m not going back there. I would just become a teetotaller if that’s my option.

P: I’m going to drop a story here. I love you, my darling sister and my brother in law. But this is fabulous. They were, they were financially hard up when they had their first child and they were sitting on the couch on a Friday night. And I think it was my brother in law who put his hand down the side of the couch and found a $10 note.

M: Woo, score!

P: And they bought potatoes. They bought a bag of potatoes and that was dinner, and it was the best dinner for them because it was roast potatoes.

M: Everyone likes a roast potato.

P: So that’s a celebration, a celebration and they celebrated that.  I’ve heard Cath talk about this, you know that was their, that was their moment, they found $10 yes! Let’s have butter on potatoes!

That’s a small win and recognising that, owning that and celebrating that together, I think that’s really important.

M: Yeah true, very true. All right. Well, we do need to wrap up. That is the end of today’s podcast. I think the conclusion is money does and doesn’t buy you happiness.

P: It’s about your perspective people, don’t think you need 75K to be happy. You don’t. That’s what I’m going to say. [Laugh]

M: Yeah, I will give you that.  

P: Thumbs up to the research.

M: All right, so [Ba bow – gameshow failure noise] to this latest study.

[Laughter]

M: All right. Well, thanks for joining us today if you want to hear more please remember to subscribe and like this podcast.

P: And remember you can find us at www.marieskelton.com, the site about how to find balance, happiness and resilience in your life, including some really practical tips and resource is to get you started on your happiness journey. Until next time.

M: Stay happy.

P: Choose Happiness. [Whispers] For 75K.

[Happy Exit Music]

Related content: Read Moving On article Turns Out Money Does Buy You Happiness, Study Finds, listen to our Podcast: What is Happiness? (E1)

All About the 5 Love Languages (E30)

by

Happiness for Cynics

This week, Marie and Pete discuss #1 New York Times bestseller Dr Gary Chapman’s “5 Love Languages” and how important it is for your relationship and your happiness to understand your own personal love language and that of your partner.

Transcript

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

P: And I’m Peter Furness. A love boat singer and seventies disco flare wearing backup dancer.

[Laughter]

P: 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! [Sings] The love boat.

M: [Laugh] This week if you haven’t guessed we are talking about love languages and Pete has just played the Love Boat song, and sang along.

P: It’s so much fun. He he. Come on, sing it with me. You kind of expect, you know Barry White to come on. It’s kind of vibe.

M: That is Five seconds were allowed before we get fined.

P: Oh, Boo. It’s so much fun.

[Happy Intro Music]

M: Okay, So this week, we are talking about a book by Gary Chapman and a concept, Sorry. [Whispers] So much more than a book.

P: [Laugh]

M: It’s more than a book and I deliberately told Pete not to do any research on it.

P: I am completely open. I am an open… book. [Laugh]

M: So Gary Chapman wrote a book called ‘The Five Love Languages’, and … I’ve mentioned it multiple times because in Covid, you have really missed touch and I’ve told you multiple times, I think touch is your love language.

P: Right.

M: During, during the past 30 episodes, and you’ve… smiled and nodded and gone ‘Meh… OK’.

P: I trust you Muz, you know me so well.

M: [Laugh] so I think it’s about time we talked about love languages.

P: Ok, so what are love languages?

M: So, they are the parts of us that represent our emotional need for love. So when our love tanks are full, everything is good.

P: Ooh, ok.

M: But we all work on different types of fuel, and being filled up with the wrong fuel can leave us feeling empty or unfulfilled. But when you fill people up with the right fuel, the right love language, then they feel on top of the world they feel loved.

P: I feel like I’m ethanol number 10.

[Laughter]

M: Touch… it is the dirtiest.

P: [Laugh] I could say something that would be inappropriate. [Hysterical laughter] OK, alright… I like this idea, though, that everyone has their own, their own need and it’s about identifying that persons need to be able to fill up their well spring of love language that brings them to their highest point.

M: It makes them feel happy.

P: Yeah, I get that.

M: And loved. Actually loved and cared for.

P: That resonates very strongly with me.

M: Great. Tick.

P: I’m in, I’m in, I’m buying in Marie.

M: [Laugh]

P: I always buy in, who am I kidding.

M: One of the things that Chapman talks about is that at the beginning of a relationship, it’s a free for.

P: Mmm. Ok

M: You’ve got all the butterflies. Doesn’t matter what they’re doing. You’re all loving on each other. Honey moon phase.

P: Yeah. Fireworks are going off.

M: Yep.

P: Lady and the Tramp spaghetti moments.

M: Yep. Now, when this really makes a difference, is once you through that honeymoon phase, right.

P: Yep

M: So we’ll start with number one.

So the first love language is:

Words of Affirmation.

P: Are these love poems? Are these the things that you write to your partner and leave on pieces of paper randomly in books?

M: Yes, it is supportive and complimentary words that make them feel the most loved.

P: So when they ‘do I look fat in this dress’, you say ‘Yes, baby. I mean no, baby.

M: That would be just a normal conversation and a no brainer to say no.

P: Yeah, true.

M: I’m just gonna throw that out. So the people whose love language use words of affirmations seek for others to tell them positive things. That’s what makes them feel good about themselves it’s what makes them feel loved and cared for. So it’s not me, that’s not me. 

P: Is this different to narcissism in terms of needing that to boost you up?

M: So there’s, there’s four others that we’ll get to in a second.

P: Alright, jumping the gun.

M: This is… No, no, no. Look, I think it’s a, it’s a fair question that could apply to any of the five, total.

P: Right, gotcha.

M: It is about what makes you feel special.

P: Okay.

M: All right?

P: Yeah.

M: And the person that you love, you want them to make you feel special. And sometimes this is more about, just like with so many other things have discussed, knowing yourself and more than that, knowing your partner and how you can make them feel special. But also them knowing what makes you feel special. Because if they’re talking to you in your wrong language.

P: It’s not registering.

M: They could be trying and trying and trying.

P: And you’re not recognising it, definitely.

M: And you feel unloved.

P: Okay. Yeah, I’m so with you. Okay.

M: All right.

P: Number two?

M: Number two:

Quality Time.

So these people, who, their love language is quality time, they require moments of undivided attention from their partners.

P: I definitely agree with that one. You need your me time with your partner.

M: And these people –

P: Date night, it’s date night.

M: Yes. It is Date night. And date night can’t be movie watching for these people.

P: Oh, right. It’s not quality time together.

M: Yes, quality is the key word there.

P: I got you, righto. That’s an easy one.

M: Okay. Number three:

Receiving Gifts.

P: Oohh…

M: And for these people, it’s not about the money, it’s the thought.

P: So buying a treasure trove of jewellery that you just give a box to every now and then, that doesn’t work.

M: I mean, look I’ll never say no to jewellery.

P: [Laugh] Wrapped in Tiffany’s?

M: Yes. I like diamonds.

[Laughter]

P: But it’s the thoughtfulness behind those sorts of gifts, the little things that you leave out or wake up one morning and there’s a gift.

M: Even the flowers that you picked from the neighbour’s yard.

P: Yeah.

M: But the fact that you picked a couple and stopped and thought my significant other would like this came home and presented it to them that, you know, if someone is a gift receiver, is there love language, then that will mean the world to that person.

P: It’s a bit like a cat bringing a dead mouse to your door. Is that, is that a gift?

M: Absolutely.

P: It’s the cat’s way of going ‘Here, I caught this for you. Here you go.’

M: It’s the thought.

P: Yeah, right.

M: So, actually, the funny thing is… someone whose love language is receiving gifts would see that from the cat and be completely touched by that.

P: Hhmm. I get it. I get that. I understand.

M: The rest of us would be like, eugghh..

P: [Laugh] Take it away.

M: All right. So number four is:

Acts of Service.

P: Oh, I’m a big one on this one.

M: Yep, so this is me.

P: Yeah?

M: The act of one partner doing things for the other person. So I have those ‘aawww moments’ when my husband has done a load of laundry and put it away when I get home.

P: Including picking up his socks?

[Laughter]

M: Yep and he’s bothered to pick up his socks off the floor. [Laugh]

P: It’s good that you register that.

[Laughter]

M: Or when I’m really busy at work and I’m running late and he puts dinner on without asking.

P: That, that was the next one that I was going to go to, like you come home and dinner is cooked for you. Who doesn’t go, ‘oh’ when you walk in and someone says here’s dinner, it’s a roast turkey.

M: Yep.

P: You know that that’s been effort put in, and that someone’s actually thought they’re going to be stressed, they’re gonna be hungry when they get home. I’m going to make dinner, and you walk in and there’s a candlelit table who wouldn’t go ‘oh’ over that?

M: So I need to get you to teach my husband about the candles and the turkey.

P: Problem is, if I did that, I’d probably end up coming over for dinner.

M: [Laugh] In a way, you both would have done an act of service that I would be grateful for.

P: This isn’t… I actually had a conversation with a friend of mine today. Over lunch about this exact point and he very freely volunteers the fact that he will make his lovers or his affectionate ones feel like a prince or a princess and He will absolutely go to all the ends of the Earth to do those sorts of things and make you feel like you are the most special person on Earth. He doesn’t want that in return.

M: And here’s the thing, is he projecting what he thinks they want on them and all they actually want is for him to say, ‘Jeez babe, you look hot’.

P: Possibly, possibly.

M: You know or if words of affirmation, you know, other things-

P: True.

M: – were your love language. So this is the next step I would say for him he might be displaying his love for others in a way that they’re not receiving [it].

P: I agree. Yes, definitely. And I’m big on that, but I think it’s, it’s an interesting trait of someone to be… And I think I fall into this as well, like I am very much am big on cooking dinner for someone ‘saying come over and I will massage you for the evening or, you know go two hours overtime when I really shouldn’t, which some of my Clients have said ‘I’ve got to be somewhere at seven thirty’ and I’ve said ‘Shut up and put your head on the table.

[Laughter]

P: You know, glasses of wine or whatever. Or that act of service, washing the car, cleaning out the bedroom.

M: Yep.

P: That sort of thing, they are expressions of service and if we don’t recognise those for the acts of love they are that’s a miscommunication. I like that one. Number four is me.

M: Woah, well, here’s number five which I think is you.

P: Yeah. Okay. This is a biggy.

M: So,

Physical Touch.

P: Yeah, definitely.

M: And it is recognised for its bonding effects for everyone. But for the person with this love language, physical touch is the supreme representation of love.

P: Guilty as charged, definitely.

M: It is snuggling and cuddling and holding hands and just having your hand on someone’s shoulder. Just being close and near to them, is this person’s love language.

P: Yeah, huge, definitely. Does it have to be giver or receiver?

M: What do you mean?

P: So if you’re a physical touch person, do you have to give or do you have to receive?

M: It’s your love language.

P: So it’s the way that you express it.

M: It’s the way that you need it to have your tank filled. So you need other’s physical touch.

P: You need physical touch, gotcha.

M: Which is why I think you were missing it and why your tank was low over the Covid isolation.

P: I’ll give you that, yep. Definitely. I was craving touch a lot. Actually, it was, it was difficult because I was very much separated from my friends who I get my physical touch from.

M: Mmm hhmm

P: I don’t have a partner and I’m very reliant on the affection of my friends. To give me those hugs, to slap me on the ass and you know, you know, even to give me a headlock or something like that, that’s physical touch. That’s expression of affection. And, yeah, I’m very dependent on that. And it was really difficult when Covid was in the height that I wasn’t getting any of that. It was really tough.

M: Yep, so that’s why multiple times I’ve said, I think physical touch is your love language Pete.

P: [Laugh]

M: And I think that’s why you missed it so much and why you were running on empty a bit from, a love perspective.

P: Yep, definitely.

M: Not that acts of service wouldn’t maybe, maybe you’re a hybrid?

P: No I –

M: Part electric? Part?

[Laughter]

P: I’m a Toyota Camry.

M: Part electric…

[Laughter]

M: Acts of Service a little bit with a lot of Physical Touch.

P: Well, I guess that’s what this is, what it comes down to. Can you be a blend of all three, all five of these? Or is there one that is the primary expression for you?

M: I think you could. I think, with all things there’s no black and white with any of this. But I think most people would go, ‘Yes, that’s me or these two are me.’ So I think you’d be more dominant. Definitely.

P: So it’s good to recognise that because then you can identify that if you are feeling that your tank is a bit low.

M: Well, I think like with so much of what we talked about, the reason it’s important is about understanding yourself and what makes you happy.

P: Yes.

M: And again so you can communicate with your partner. So I think a lot of miscommunication and not feeling loved can be avoided by understanding each other a little bit better. Having a conversation around what makes you feel loved.

P: Identifying which one of the five you are.

M: Yeah, and knowing that, I’m in acts of service person, but that might not be Francis, so I could do laundry until –

P: Francis being your husband.

M: Yes, and I could do laundry till the cows come home and feel really rejected that I’m not even getting a thank you for it and that Francis isn’t feeling loved because I keep picking up his socks.

P: [Laugh]

M: And I could let that really drive a wedge between us or we could have a conversation about how he likes to feel loved and we can split the laundry, and I can tell him he looks hot in his new jeans. That would be much easier than doing laundry all the time.

P: [Laugh] It’s also recognising that. So when you hear that that someone or you does an act of service like picking up their socks, you go aww they’re trying isn’t that nice.

M: Yep.

P: They’re trying to meet me on my love language.

M: Yes, absolutely.

P: Which could be really hard for some couples, I imagine. Or some relationships is meeting someone on their love language and if you’re not a physical person, but your partner is a physical touch love language. Woah that’s gonna be tough. It’s going to be hard.

M: Well, I think we all start relationships with the right intent, which is to make the other person happy. You want that at the beginning at least.

P: Ok. That’s, that’s an assumption. But Yes.

M: [Laugh] Ok. It’s a big assumption I guess.

P: Well it is because a lot of it’s about making us happy. You go into a relationship because you want them to make you feel happy.

M: All right, maybe we need to go down a different route, [Laugh] that is a whole other kettle of fish.

P: I’m sorry, I’m throwing spanners in the works here. [Laugh]

M: Yeah, so I think that, I think what you give to a person comes back to you.

P: Oh, I completely agree. Yep, yep definitely.

M: So if you’re aiming to make someone else happy, that comes back to you, you know, tenfold. So understanding early on what that person needs to be happy, it just becomes, a bit of a habit then about the way that you two work together. So, I guess. How do you know which one you are?, is a really good question.

P: Hhmm.

M: I’ve got a few points here.

So if you’re always seeking approval or recognition for who you are or what you do, then you’re love language may be Words of Affirmation.

P: Yeah, that’s fair. Approval. Approval via words which is very specific.

M: If you’re asking, you know, ‘How’s the dinner? Do you like it? Is it good? Or…

P: Do I look good in these jeans?

M: Yes.

[Laughter]

M: Now.

If you frequently initiate evening walks, then Quality Time may be your primary love language.

P: Oohh I like that. If you’re initiating actions to spend with your partner and encouraging them to come with you on certain aspects of your lifestyle then, yeah, yeah.

M:

If you keep and cherish small gifts, you may speak the love language of Receiving Gifts.

P: Does that make you a hoarder?

M: Yeah, well, you might be a hoarder, it’s a fine line.

P: [Laugh]

M: I think my mom might be one of these [Gift Receiver], because she’s still got a box with all of our birthday cards and-

P: Oh my mum’s the same. She categorises them.

M: Maybe it’s just a thing older people do.

P: We all have our own book, like my sister and I, and even the niece and nephew they all have their own books.

M: Aww. Maybe that’s her love language then.

P: Keeper of the treasures.

M: Receiver of gifts.

P: Yeah.

M:

If you feel overwhelming love when your partner brings home takeout. [Love language- Acts of Service]

P: [Laugh] OK, for those of you who don’t know Marie and Bruce [Francis’s Australian name] are like the take out kings and queens. [Laugh]

M: I just.. hate cooking.

P: [Laugh]

M: I’m so privileged I get it, but I just hate cooking and it’s so cheap nowadays.

P: True.

M: I just don’t get it.

P: Anyway they could be cooking for you as well. So if someone cooks dinner for you every night, is that the same?

M: Yeah, look, it’s yeah, but to me it’s not the thought that counts when it comes to cooking dinner. So I think both me and Francis are better out of the kitchen.

P: [Laugh]

M: He does a really mean soup and toast from a packet.

[Laughter]

M:

Then if you melt when your partner touches you randomly, then Physical Touch.

P: Oh, yeah definitely.

M: That’s probably your love language.

P: That’s my love language. Definitely. Yeah, yeah, I think that’s a yes. It’s a measurement of intimacy. And it is those soft, and you could be having the worst argument on and it’s just that one little touch that just makes you go ‘Yep, we’re good’.

M: Little touch?

P: Yep, it could be a small touch, doesn’t need to be big.

M: Not an angry touch? You’re having an argument?

P: That depends on how good the angry gets?

[Laughter]

M: We’re not talking make up sex.

P: [Laugh] You’re going to throw me on couch, wrestle me down. Yeah, maybe sure [laugh].

M: If we were videoing this. You would see the way that Pete reached to me when he was talking about having an angry discussion and ran his, trailed his finger down my arm.

P: Oh, dear. [Laugh]

M: All right, so again, why is this important? Why are we talking about this? It’s self-awareness again.

P: It is, it’s recognising what your language of communication is, which I think leads to more intimate relationships.

M: Absolutely. Yep.

P: If you’re sending the right signals and if you are receiving the right information then it enriches your happiness, it makes you feel better about things because you’re recognising them. You may not necessarily receive them in the right way, but you’re recognising the effort, which leads to more intimacy and more understanding of, of happiness and good feelings.

M: Plus, if your partner stops cooking really very average dinners and just brings you home or take out and it makes you happier, like Bob’s your Uncle.

P: True.

M: Hint, hint.

P: Too bad for the cook out there who just can’t get the pumpkin soup right.

M: From a packet, let’s be really clear. There’s no cooking from scratch going on here.

P: So not my role. You’re talking to the man that makes a roast chicken at 11 o’clock at night if he needs to.

M: Okay, maybe you can cook for me then. That’ll work.

P: Sure.

M: All right, so last tip or hint to move forward for our listeners is Google lists. So they’re are surveys online that you and your partner can do to learn a bit more about each other and if nothing else, just a fun little exercise. So if you enjoy spending quality time with each other, then this is the thing to Google and do on a Friday night.

P: It’s like the Cosmo sex quiz.

M: Done. That is it. That is absolutely it. I haven’t done one of those since I was a teenager.

P: Yeah, there’s a reason. [Laugh]

M: Do they still exist?

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

M: And remember, you can find us at www.marieskelton.com, a site about how to find balance, happiness and resilience in your life until next time.

P: Choose happiness.

Related content: Listen to our Podcast: Positive Affirmations (E29)

Buying Into Positive Affirmations (E29)

by

Happiness for Cynics

In this week’s episode, Pete tries to convince Marie about the science behind positive affirmations and how they can change your mindset.

Transcript

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

P: And I’m Peter Furness, hug lover, shade thrower and sweaty Betty. 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, then this is the place to be.

P: Have you ever tried the power of repetition? Got a song stuck in your head or tried to live your life by a quote or inspiration and then wondered why it didn’t stick?

M: If so, stick with us.

P: Ha ha.

M: Because today’s episode is all about positive affirmations.

[Happy Intro Music]

M: Alright Pete, positive affirmations.

P: This is going to be a fun one, ha ha.

M: Load of BS. Right?

P: [Laughter] I can’t wait to watch your mind unravel Marie, your cynicism and scepticism fall apart like an unmade Pavlova on a hot summer’s day.

M: I just have to say, I’m not doing it.

P: [Laughter] I beg to differ. I think this is one where you’re going to have to step up. You’re going to have to do it. You’re going to do your yoga, you’re going to do some Om-ing and chanting.

M: No, it’s not. It’s not me.

P: [Laugh] Outside the comfort zone Muz.

M: I have at one point put um… I’ve done a Grateful Wall, a Gratefulness Wall, and put things I’m grateful for. But positive affirmations.

P: [Laugh]

M: It’s just a step too far. It is relegated in my mind.

P: Okay, I think I think we need to explore this because as you’re discovering, I sat here and watched it. The science proves it.

M: Yeah…

P: [Laugh] So what are we talking about?

M: But you never really know who has paid for the science.

P: Oh, here we go, here we go.

M: [Laughter]

P: Who was the money behind the research?

M: Mmm Hmm right? It was probably the sugar industry is all I’m saying.

P: [Laughter] Or the pharmaceutical industry.

M: [Laugh]

P: Oh! did I say that, sorry.

M: All right. You tell me, what are we talking about?

P: We’re talking about words. Words are powerful.

M: The irony is that I was a journalist. So I’m down with words.

[Laughter]

P: That’s a fundamental standing point. If we start with that point that words are powerful and our words have an impact on how we interpret and feel and exude and shape ourselves. Can you agree with that?

M: Yes.

P: Yes. Okay, so we agree on that point.

M: I feel like you’re about to trap me.

P: I am about to trap you.

[Laughter]

P: Positive affirmations are used by lots of different people in lots of different ways. The fundamental belief is that if you can say something to yourself, you start believing it.

M: I am a Care Bear. I am a Care Bear. I am a Care Bear.

P: [Laugh] Can we agree on…

M: See I’m not a Care Bear. I don’t even believe it.

P: [Laugh] we’re going to come back to that in a minute. But if we can believe that, that’s what we’re talking about, is the phrases that we have and that we use and that are used by people to reinforce themselves or to make themselves change a habit or to make themselves feel differently about a situation.

M: Okay, I’m also not down with hypnotherapy. Just so you know, and we can do that another time.

P: Oh no, no, no, no, no, this is not hypnotherapy. This is different where we’re going to stay on track.

M: I know. We’ve hit the limit of my sceptic mind. My inflexible mind is just not quite coping with this one.

P: So I’m going to throw a few things that at you, so Dr Carmen Harra, who is a well known author and interpretive psychologist she calls herself. She has a couple of quotes ‘Affirmations do indeed strengthen us by helping us believe in the potential of an action we desire to manifest.’

M: Now the fact that she’s given herself her own title is not reassuring me.

P: Ok, let’s just look at the quote.

M: Ok, say the quote again, say it again.

P: We’re going to say the words. ‘Affirmations do indeed strengthen us by helping us believe in the potential of an action we desire to manifest.’ Can you talk yourself into believing something will happen?

M: I think it can change mindset not, not scenarios or situations.

P: Okay, so it changes mindset, so we can change our…

M: I can’t talk myself into being president of the United States.

P: Ok. True? Yes, but it can change your belief in the potential that you could become a president of the United States, if you so desired.

M: Ok…

P If that was your goal, and you’re using a positive affirmation every morning to keep you on track with that goal.

M: Then I’d just call you an arrogant nitwit.

P: [Laugh] alright, okay. Let’s move on to something else then.

‘In the sequence of thought-speech-action, affirmations play an integral role by breaking patterns of negative thoughts, negative speech, and, in turn, negative actions.’

M: This one I’m on board with, right. If you say a bunch of negative stuff to yourself or either internally and internalise it or actually say it out loud to self and you start sprinkling in positive stuff to balance that out, then absolutely, that changes.

P: So the power of words in positive affirmations can change the way that you interpret information.

M: And perceive the world.

P: We agree on that one?

M: Sure.

P: Great okay, all right, I’m going to throw another at you. This is from Rosslyn Kemerer. Who is a Yoga and Reiki practitioner ‘Speaking in the affirmative is life-changing because in order to speak positively, we must think positively.’

M: Again, I am a Care Bear. I am a Care Bear. I am a Care Bear. [Laugh]

P: Stop focusing on the Care Bear.

[Laughter]

P: We’re going to look at the quote and the words. Speaking in the affirmative is life changing, in order to speak positively we must think positively.

M: So, I do believe there’s correlation here. However, I don’t think that if you’re negative and you are in a negative head space that simply saying positive words is going to get you out of a poor mental state.

P: I actually agree with you on this one Marie.

M: Woo! I like that.

P: [Laugh]

M: I don’t think it can hurt. You may as well try it right. Let’s just throw mud at the wall and see if it sticks.

P: It doesn’t hurt but there’s a fundamental difference here in terms of what I’ve experienced with positive affirmations now being the buyer-inerer, the person that just accepts and runs with everything for years until I’m proven otherwise. I did get into positive affirmations there for a while and was following them and ruling them and so forth and perhaps my more cynical state in the last few years and my more scientific based, evidence based research, I have come up with some, some concepts that you can say as much as you want. Unless there’s a deep seated belief in what it is that you are saying that is part of your conscious and your subconscious, you can say whatever you want in it isn’t going to isn’t going to occur. So you could say, I’m a Care Bear, I’m a Care Bear, I’m a Care Bear.

M: And that is the end of today’s show ladies and gentlemen.

P: [Laugh] No, no, no, no. We’re going to explore this further.

[Laughter]

P: [DR] Sophie Henshaw, who is the person that I read and did some research on. She talks about it in terms of

“If what you are trying to affirm is in-congruent with a deeply held negative belief, then all that results is an inner struggle.”

And she talks about the fact that if you’re putting positive affirmations out there when you’re reciting these tasks, daily, daily, daily, but you have a deep seated belief in your subconscious that doesn’t support that, your subconscious starts to have a battle with your conscious, and you end up in this spiral of inner turmoil because you can’t reconcile the ‘I am a Care Bear’ with the fact that no, I don’t believe in Care Bears.

M: You don’t?

P: I’m using your example here.

[Laughter]

M: Yeah look, I hear what you say. And for me, I think positive affirmations might round out a positive, a positive personality.

P: Yes.

M: But I don’t see them turning a negative into a positive.

P: And you’re absolutely right.

M: And I don’t also see that someone who isn’t a Care Bear is going to become a Care Bear because they believe it, or President or any number of other things.

P: Actually, I’m going to pull you up there, they can believe it. They have to back it up.

M: And then the third group is the ones who believe it. And their reality is so separated, so far gone from reality. Their reality is not tied and they’re the arrogant ones that we’re talking about and we come across a lot of them playing sports.

P: Yep

M: Who believe they’re all that and a team couldn’t survive without them. And lo and behold, they’re the worst thing and the toxic person on the team, and you take him away and the team works better and they’re in this, this… And I’ve come across so many of these people throughout my sports career.

P: Yes.

M: Who… They might be talented, but they think they’re all that, and also in my professional career, who must be telling themselves some kind of positive affirmations or something. Their internal monologue in general is not based in reality at all. And they’re the ones I worry about as well.

P: There’s a disconnect between what they’re exuding to the outside world and what their true beliefs are on the inside. And this comes back to what we’ve talked about a lot with a lot of our episodes, about doing the work, doing the work on the self so that you can go down to your core beliefs, go down to your inner beliefs. And that’s where the subconscious rules. Because the subconscious draws on all those core and inner deeply held beliefs.

I could tell myself I am the world’s most beautiful model, but I know that deep down inside me that’s not congruent with who I am. You know I have, there are issues in there that will eke out and start to have that battle because I’m telling myself I’m this beautiful, beautiful person, that I could be a magazine cover model and deep inside that’s not going to be congruent with who I am or what I am or what I believe. There’s gonna be a lot of turmoil there which…

M: So, if that’s the case, then why do it at all, if what you believe is negative and you’re trying to then make that change?

P: This is where it comes down to the psychology of it and trying to again use positive affirmations that back up the work that you’re doing. So unless you have done the work on belief systems and what you’re trying to achieve, being truly beneficial for you and believing in it, positive affirmations don’t work. They’re just a Band-Aid.

M: So they just work alongside much tougher work.

P: Exactly.

M: There’s a great book that I read called ‘Can’t Hurt Me’ by David Goggins, and it’s a huge book right now. This guy’s a bit crazy, let’s be honest. He is amazingly inspirational. So ex-Navy, Navy, Air Force and Army, did Army Rangers. He was a  SEAL, he’s just crazy, and then and then he went and did the ultra-marathon running with no training, almost no training, exceptional specimen of a human being. But it is tough to do all this stuff, and he talks about positive affirmations. I think you’ve got to be putting in the work and then putting in the work and then talking to yourself in the right way. And I know when you’re exhausted, how easy it is to give up.

P: Yep.

M: Right? And I think the power-

P: The physical capacity is done.

M: – of his mental strength is that he pushes himself harder when it’s the hardest, rather than allowing himself excuses when it’s the hardest.

P: Definitely.

M: And as an ultra-marathon runner. You know that’s 100 miles minimum, I think. You know by mile… who knows what, you’d be thinking ‘Why am I doing this? I don’t need to prove anything.’

P: Yep.

M: You know the internal monologue, my feet are blistered and you start that, and you start that talk to yourself, which is all about giving yourself an excuse.

P: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I actually have an ultra-marathoner who’s a client. This guy sleeps in ditches. He goes on these crazy three day bike rides, and then will literally pull over the side of the highway and fall asleep in a ditch in the freezing cold.  

M: See, I think even, it is actually the definition of sanity to question why you even we’re doing that the first place.

P: But if he, okay so if Dr Bradley I will mention the name if you’re listening, Dr Bradley, I told you it would happen. I’d quote you here. He used, the use of positive affirmations in that instance is when you can tell yourself because you have done it before. So he’s doing these crazy training things to prove to himself that he can actually achieve these goals so that when he is faced with a run in South America doing a 100 kilometre marathon and if he is feeling that pain or that excuse to give up, in that instance positive affirmations could work because he’s referencing deeply held beliefs that he can actually do this. He’s existed in it before he slept in a ditch. He’s done this in the Australian outback, so why can’t I do it in the South American wilderness?

And in that way, you can train your brain to access those extra reserves of physical capacity via the use of positive affirmations and self-talk.

M: Absolutely so David Goggins ideas that we’re only using, it’s been years since I read the book, about 20% [40%] of our physical ability ever at any point and he thinks he’s gotten nowhere near 100[%]. But many would argue past 100. I don’t know if what he’s done is actually healthy a lot of the time.

P: [Laugh]

M: But I definitely think that when your mind is telling you to stop, you can definitely counter that by saying, actually no, I can do this. I know I can do this.

P: Yes, and it doesn’t even…

M: …that positive and balancing your negative self-talk with the positive. Where I struggle with positive affirmations as a cynic and a sceptic is with the very average looking young lady who wants to be a model, and she’s telling herself, I’m going to be a model, I’m going to be a model, I’m going to be a model, I’m going to be a model or the person who cannot, for whatever reason, put the sugar or the carbs away.

P: Yeah, definitely.

M: But is saying I’m going to be thin, I’m going to be thin, I’m going to be thin, right? Or I just don’t think that saying the words without doing the work can make any difference.

P: And science supports you. And even as a user of positive affirmations and the biggest jump on the bandwagon kind of guy, I support you as well. I believe that that’s the fundamental truth is that you can’t just will yourself into a state of being or a result by using positive affirmations. They have to come from somewhere deeper, based within in the subconscious, and that only comes from doing the hard work.

M: Now, sigh.

P: [Laugh]

M: After saying all of that, sharing my scepticism and with only a few minutes left in the show. I’m going to say that I did do some research.

P: Off we go, I’ve got some science here too actually.

M: And as much as it pains me to say-

P: Ha, ha!

M: -there is research that supports the effectiveness off positive affirmations. So MRI evidence suggests that certain neural pathways are increased when people practise self-affirmation tasks. I imagine that you’d have to do this without my scepticism, and cynicism.

P: [Laugh] not necessarily.

M: You’d probably have to put a little bit of belief and heart into what you’re doing and then as far as more research goes so self-affirmations have been shown to decrease health, deteriorating stress, so they help with negative stress. They’ve also been used effectively, and this is what we’re talking about before they’ve been used effectively in interventions that led people to increase their physical behaviour.

P: So that’s the cutting off the negative to increase the positive to create a desired result.

M: Yep, so if you are training for a marathon or just working out the gym or just hoping to get fit, then positive affirmations can definitely help to boost the effectiveness of the intervention you’re already taking.

P: Yep

M: They can make us less likely to dismiss harmful health messages. So this in particular was looked at in relation to smoking and trying to quit smoking. They can help with your intention to change for the better and also to eat more fruit and vegetables.

P: Really? I will eat bananas, I will eat bananas.

M: [Laugh] so that was Epton and Harris in 2008 who looked at fruit and vegetables and then Harris and some other researchers in 2007 looked at harmful health messages. And then the last one I looked at it’s been linked to positive academic achievement by mitigating GPA decline in students who felt left out at college.

P: Oh, really.

M: So this is, we’ve talked about social exclusion before. So students who were feeling excluded and not part of the group, generally they’re GPA declines. It has a real negative impact being excluded. We’ve talked about that so positive affirmations help them to keep their GPA consistent or increase it again.

P: Hhmm interesting.

M: And that was Layous in 2017.

P: I like all those examples. I’m going to throw something a little bit left field in here and trying to compute that GPA output with the social exclusion. That’s a very interesting…

M: Well, we do know that if you’re feeling left out, it can have huge impacts on your mental health, so.

P: The type of, type of person does for some it actually garners your resources and that makes you even more determined in a certain way. I think that comes down to personality.

M: I think you’ve still got to have someone. So if you’re at university and you have no friends I think there’s very few people that are not going to be impacted by that, and it depends on the level of exclusion. If you’re being bullied, that’s a whole other kettle of fish, right?

P: Yeah. Yeah. I’m thinking of the Sheldon’s in the world.

M: [Laugh] Who don’t notice and that’s why they keep going.

[Laughter]

P: Alright, I do know we’re running out of time, but I do want to throw this in there that some people have a different interpretation of the affirmations versus mantras.

I’m actually going to reference the work of the Gabriel Axel here, who’s a neuroscientist and a certified yoga teacher. He has written a lot on the use of mantra in terms of trying to develop a mind state, but also looked at the science behind it, using words like ‘Om’ and even ‘Amen’ in religious beliefs, he’s actually gone and done the science behind what the words do in the brain and he finds that sound evokes movements of energy within the brain. Evocations of certain sounds are linked with interoception… which is inner body sensations and in the emotional sense of self. Now these have found predominantly in the right hemisphere of the brain. Conversely, the narrative strand of sounds in which we give meaning is done in the left hemisphere of the brain.

M: Say that again.

P: The narrative strand of sounds in which we process meaning. So the way that we feel about sounds that come through our brain is done in the Left Hemisphere.

M: Okay, and sorry, what was the right?

P: The right is the inner body sensations, so that’s interoception.

M: Okay, sensations versus feelings.

P: Yes, what he’s talking about is bridging those two hemi-spheres by the use of mantras, and he says mantras from a physics standpoint, the sounds themselves will resonate in different parts of the body and mind creating actual interactions or events so therefore you can get sounds to cross the hemispheres of the brain to actually create different thought processes. So this is the science behind mantras and not necessarily affirmations. And he talks about validating a mantra for ourselves so we’ll be using the words such as ‘Om’ in a yoga practise, you can actually ‘Om’ your way out of a negative thought pattern.

M: Mm Hhmm…

P: It’s scientific. [Laugh]

M: Mm Hhmm…

P: You can look it up. He has supporting evidence from Mark Changizi who’s written a book ‘Harnessed: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man’. So these are all interesting things will put on the website to maybe follow up.

M: Alright…

P: But you know, that’s just another aspect to come at it from in terms of the neuro scientific point of view.

M: All right, well, if the cynic me decides that I’m going to buy into this, I might read your book otherwise,

P: [Laugh]

M: it can be in our show notes.

P: [Laugh]

M: All right. I think we are going to have to finish this up for today.

P: So if you want to go out there and do some positive affirmations people, that’s all fine. But do the work behind it as well. I think that’s what we get from this.

M: Go do some work and throw in, layer in. It’s the icing on the cake. I guess is what I’m saying.

P: Yeah exactly.

M: It isn’t the cake.

P: No, you can’t rely on it alone. It has to be an add on.

M: Yep, all right, well thank you for joining us. As always, if you can like or subscribe to our podcast, we would very much appreciate it. And if you want to see our show notes or transcriptions you can visit marieskelton.com/podcast. Thanks for joining us.

P: Choose happiness.

[Happy Exit Music]

Related Content: Read Moving On articles Lessons From Navy SEAL David Goggins and Words That Can Change Your Mindset

Happy International Day of Friendship (E28)

by

Happiness for Cynics

Celebrate International Day of Friendship with besties Marie and Pete, who hide under a blanket fort on a bed to discuss the value of friendship – from combatting the loneliness epidemic to how it can help you perceive the world differently.

Transcript

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

P: And I’m Peter Furness a flexibility fan, adaptive, creative and gold focused obsessive. 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: Maybe just want more.

P: Then this is the place to be.

M: And this week, we are talking about friendships.

P: Awe

[Happy Music]

M: So, Pete, we’re trialing a new model for recording podcasts this week.

P: Yes, we’re talking about friendships. And I’m being a really good friend because you put me under a blanket.

[Laughter]

M: Literally.

P: Literally, really. And I’m sitting here and I’m hot [Laugh].

M: So I was listening to our own podcast this week, and I decided that we echo too much because we don’t have the sound studio. We’re now in my bedroom. My husband is very forgiving.

P: I’m schmitzing like a schmagetthi.

[Laughter]

M: We’re hiding under a blanket. We’ll see whether the sound quality is any better for all of you out there.

P: This isn’t gonna last in summer you can tell.

M: We have air con it’s OK. So this is what good friends do, we make forts on the bed.

[Laughter]

M: And speaking of good friends were talking about friendship today.

P: Very big topic.

M: And really, I’m going to call out to a new friend that we’ve both made recently, David. David, no last name, we’ll protect the privacy of our new friends and we were talking just last weekend about the concept of your chosen family.

P: Yes.

M: And I think for a lot of us today who move away from our hometowns you choose your new family when you move to new areas.

P: I think it’s vital to find your chosen family because you need to replace those close bonds with someone else and if you don’t have your family around you. Then you need to find, you need to find your tribe.

M: Find your tribe. And you know what? When you could choose your family..

P: [Laughter] there is a little bit of that.

M: Times can be much happier.

P: Well they can be. Although there are, there are lessons to be learned by sticking with the one person for 20/30 years.

M: Yeah, True, true. So let’s get to why this is important. Why friendship is important. I think that the macro story here is that there is a loneliness epidemic right now.

P: Is there? Is there actually a loneliness epidemic at the moment?

M: Absolutely. So, there’s a lot of research right now. We’re living older and unfortunately, even when we do couple up, we don’t always die at the same age. So there’s a lot more people who are living a lot longer by themselves we’re also divorcing at higher rates, not so much in the last 10/ 20 years, but divorce rates have gone up in the last few hundred years. So there are more people in general who just are single going into their older years as well. And also we’re marrying later. So again there are a lot more single people out there who are living by themselves and particularly with Corona virus. This has been a huge problem with people just being alone, not only lonely but alone for so long.

P: Yeah, that’s true.

M: So it is definitely. They’re calling it the loneliness epidemic. So estimates as high as 30% of people are lonely.

P: Wow.

M: And feel lonely regularly in their lives.

P: OK.

M: Yes. So this is why friendship is so important. Such a big topic. And also because all the research shows that having strong relationships and finding your tribe and sense of belonging and connectedness is critical to happiness.

P: Yeah that message comes through in every single time we talk about something. It’s like, it’s really the social connections are the big ones. Friendships is another one of those social conventions. And I guess with friendship as well that comes down to a social paradigm; Because since the change of the last 100 years of social conventions and the ideas of marriage and so forth where a lot of people are choosing not to be married at all and that whole concept of staying single and being content, staying single. It’s no longer a thing of like ‘Oh, you’re going to die an old maid.’ Now it’s like ‘you’re going to die and old maid and it’s going to be great!’

M: [Laugh]

P: There is, There is. There is no..

M: Shame.

P: Predilection to being, yeah or shame being single and being, you know, cast into a life of looking after your parents in the county cottage aka Jane Austen anymore. You know, you can be single, be happy and this is where friendships do come in because you can replace those marriage ties or family ties that come with marriage with friendships. And that’s where David’s thing about the chosen family becomes really important.

M: Absolutely and even your.. I’m married and happily married. Mostly.

P: [Laugh]

M: I mean, no marriage is perfect. Let’s be really honest and vulnerable here. He leaves his socks everywhere. It’s a thing. It drives me batty. But we’re happy, so happy, so, so happy.

P: [Laugh]

M: Anyway. But my friends are such a big part of my life. And..

P: I was going to take you to task over this Marie because those of you who do know us, we’ve been friends for a while now. I would say you’re a very driving force in terms of keeping our social connections going. In our social group. You are the one that actually gets in there and organises regular catchup’s and says, no, no, no, let’s do this, let’s keep this going on. I was going to pose a question to you. It could be part of your personality because you are the organisation princess, that we know and love. But is that, was it a conscious decision for you? Or is it a conscious decision for you to to, make sure and plan those catch ups and commit because I find you are very committed to those catch ups.

M: I can. Umm, that’s a really good question, and now you’ve thrown me.

P: Ah ha! He he.

M: I think part of its personality. Let’s be really honest.

P: Yep!

M: I like control.

[Laughter]

P: I get that. But there is, you’re the person that really does, like, push.  Like ‘No, no, we’re not letting this go, guys. We’re going to catch up this week, and it’s going to be this week and it’s going to be tomorrow.’

M: ‘And you will enjoy it and it will be fun and everyone will laugh!’

P: And that’s your personality coming out.

[Laughter]

P: Whereas I think for some of us and I’m guilty of this, definitely some of my long term friends will be nodding in agreement that it’s too easy to let those catch ups to go.

M: Yeah.

P: It’s too easy to just go ‘Oh no, let’s just do it next week. I’m feeling tired.’ And that’s actually it’s important not to do that all the time.

M: Yeah, look, I think it depends on the person you’re going to get me in trouble here. I find it easier, proximity helps to drive a lot of what I choose to do with my friends. So if it’s just going down to the local pub, so much easier than driving across the bridge.

P: Oh, yes, absolutely.

M: To go see someone.

P: Yeah, yeah, definitely.

M: And if it’s an activity I like.

P: Volleyball.

M: Food.

P: Food, volleyball. Got it. [Laugh]

M: Yeah, pretty much so look as long as those two things align, then I’ll push for things happening. But it’s, it’s weird that you say that because I feel like I’ve been really quite introverted and isolated during Covid.

P: Which, this surprises me about you because that’s not the impression that I’ve had to you for the last eight years or so.

M: Yep, yep. I don’t know.

P: Maybe, maybe the pandemic has changed you.

M: No I’ve always, I’ve always fought against too much social time, a love my social time, and I love people and I love hanging out with people, and I get a lot from those interactions, and I think it’s critical. And as a journalist and then a communications expert, I completely understand the benefit and value of face to face communication in particular. And I understand how that’s challenging people right now during Covid, however, it’s exhausting to me.

P: Yeah, alright.

M: So I need my time to re-centre, and I think that’s where the writing and reading comes in, and researching.

P: That’s the introvert/ extrovert balance there isn’t it?

M: Yeah, and I’m constantly fighting that pull.

P: I think it’s a fine line. I think I do the same thing. I really value my solo time. And for me, I’ve had more people living in my house lately and it’s interesting how that changes your solo time. And every now and then you’re like ‘Oh, can everyone just leave.’ I just need an hour. [Laugh]

M: Yep, So that’s been my reality. And I feel like I’m always fighting that every day, like I just want everyone to go away.

P: Yeah.

M: So that’s why I say I’m an introvert. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to hang out with people and love people.

P: But friendships are vitally important to making sure that we keep those social connections and instances alive. So let’s talk a bit more about the research behind that.

M: You’ve done a whole lot. So, I looked very much into why this is important and looked at the loneliness epidemic and another one, sleeplessness breeds loneliness.

P: Sleeplessness breeds loneliness. Okay, let’s go into that one.

M: Again, I don’t actually, we won’t spend too much time on this one. I don’t know whether lonely people don’t get as much sleep, and therefore, when they’re not sleeping there feeling more lonely, I don’t know the cause and effect there, right? They’re not going out, and I don’t know how that works, but absolutely there’s so much that’s tied to insomnia and sleeplessness when it comes to depression and just not feeling good. So, sleeplessness or insomnia or poor sleep could be a cause or an effect.

P: I think it makes you less likely to reach out to people because being in proximity to people and having to take part in a conversation becomes a bit more exhausting if you’ve had sleeplessness.

M: Mmm Hhm. Yep, Absolutely. Now you had some great studies here?

P: Yeah. I have.

M: I want to hear about your University of Virginia one. Can we go to that one?

P: [Laugh] Yeah okay. So the perception of friendship and how it makes us perceive things, friendships make us perceive our life better. One of the great benefits of friendships is that we get to sound things off people and that can change our perception of how well off or how beneficial we are or how healthy we are and all those sorts of things.

The University of Virginia did a wonderful study with backpacks and a hill. So, they took 34 students. Put them all at the bottom of a hill and for some of the students, they couple them up with friends, and for some of them they were left alone and the question was how steep is the hill? And they had a high degree of the people with couples, friendships perceived the hill to be a lot less steep because they were standing there with a backpack on their shoulders and they had their buddy.

M: Oh, I love it.

P: Mmm. So it changes the way that you look at the world when you’ve got someone standing next to you or by you or with you.

M: So it’s just a perception thing.

P: Completely.

M: I have a great little story that I want to share, which has nothing to do with anything  but I want to share it.

P: [Laugh] That’s what you do on this podcast.

M: But you made me think of [it]. Just about.. ‘Oh, I’m just going to share it anyway. So, a teacher blew up balloons, hundreds of balloons and put them into the corridor with each of the students names on it. And all the students came out of their classrooms at the end of the day and she said, ‘Okay, kids, you’ve got a minute to find your balloon.’ And there were hundreds of kids and hundreds of balloons.

P: That sounds like so much fun! [Laugh]

M: They went into the balloons and they were looking and after a minute she said ‘Ok everyone stop, who’s found their balloon?’ and no one had ofcourse because there were too many and no one could find their balloon. She said to them, ‘If you had stopped for a second and not thought about you and your balloon, but thought about everyone else in the room and found one balloon with a person’s name that you know and handed them their balloon. Everyone would have had their balloon within a minute.

P: Mmm. That’s beautiful. That’s wonderful.

M: Absolutely. And so the moral is, happiness is the same. If you’re constantly looking just at yourself, you’ll never find happiness.

P: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It doesn’t come through.

M: But if you do it with your friends, if you find your friends and you worry about their happiness. Happiness will come back to you.

P: That’s because happiness isn’t a destination, it’s a benefit.

M: But it’s also social and it’s about, it’s about looking after others and being kind to others and we’ve talked about volunteering before as an example as well, spending your time being kind to others comes back to you tenfold.

P: Tenfold, definitely. I’ve got a story that supports that actually.

M: This is actual research not just story.

P: Well, no, this one’s a book and it was written by Jeffrey Zaslow and it’s the story of The Girls from Ames. I think I said that right. It’s a story of women in a 40 year old friendship and this author talks about a group of 11 childhood friends who shared crises and support and lives, and they’ve been in this relationship for 40 years to the point where they all moved to different parts of the country and they were separated by a great geographical boundaries and at some point, as these ladies aged, there were different things that came up and one woman was diagnosed with breast cancer and when she spoke to her doctor, her doctor said, ‘Surround yourself with the people who love you’ and, of course she immediately thought of her, … her family. But then the first people that she reached out to was this circle of friends, this circle of 11 people and she talked differently with them than she did with her doctor and even with her family.

And one of the things was when she was going through the chemotherapy treatment, she said, ‘Oh, my throat is always really dry.’ So one friend sent her a smoothie maker and recipes for smoothies and it was that kind of thoughtfulness that came through, and it’s because she felt much more comfortable talking about the intricacies and the details of her, her symptoms and how she was feeling because she knew she could trust these women with everything, and it’s that honesty and openness. You know, it comes down to, you know I’ll be really blank and frank here. Being able to talk about lovers and so forth with friends and going this was happening the other night, and I didn’t know what was going on. We’ve all had those conversations. You can’t talk to your husband about that.

M: Yeah.

P: Vault conversations. I remembered you talked about that once. No this doesn’t leave the…

M: There are some vault conversations, yeah.

P: But it is. It’s that freedom to be able to talk completely and honestly and openly, and that’s where friendships are really special and in this way, it’s supported by some of the other research that I’ve seen with Rebecca G. Adams, a Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro and she cites .. that ‘friendship has more psychological impact than family.’

M: It’s your chosen family.

P: It’s.. See the research supports that perhaps our friendships are really more important than our family relationships at certain points in our life.

M: Well, obviously not as a baby, but..

P: No but maybe as we get older, it’s possibly more important that we surround ourselves with close friendships.

M: Yeah.

P: And I can say this. Honestly, I believe that I have a really close friendship with my sister, and that’s gotten even more closer as we’ve gone on together. We were never that close as kids, but now I could trust her with anything. And yet I probably wouldn’t ring her up and talk about my lover’s and things like that. [Laugh]

M: I don’t think she’d want to hear it Pete.

P: Well she might [laugh]. You never know.

M: I think that it starts in teen years when you’re trying to break away from your parents. I think that’s when, when the shift happens, definitely you’re learning to be independent and friendships at that age can have a huge impact on who you end up being as an adult.

P: Absolutely and that, they are very formative, some of the research I came across was really supportive about how we seek friendships in our teen years and what that does for our development.

M: Mmm Hmm. Definitely, always looking for the cool kids.

P: [Laugh] The rebels. I think that says something about us.

M: [Laugh] So I know both of us have moved a lot and have had a variety of different friendships, and I’ve definitely been blessed with the different cultures that have had to..

P: Get to know?

M: Get to know.

P: And understand? [Laugh]

M: Yeah, definitely and I think, I think it’s just such a blessing when you move overseas and can make friends with people who are not like you.

P: Yeah, Ahh yes.

M: And you find things that bond you together and learn so much more about yourself. You know, I think it’s really valuable to.. And then I went and married an American.

P: He he

M: So I think that’s just such a good growth opportunity as well. But making friends is not easy.

P: It kinda.. for some people it’s really difficult, definitely. I wasn’t I wasn’t able to make friends very easily at all until I moved away from home.

M: Same, actually. And I went to a preschool that fed into a primary school, that fed into the high school friends, and then my college and then most of my friends, all went to the two universities in my town, right?

P: Right, He he.

M: So it wasn’t ‘til I went overseas that I had to.. And I’d made different friends along the way, but more because they’d come into my life and joined my friendship circles, not because I’d gone looking for them. It was until I moved overseas that I was like, well, this is awkward.

P: Yeah.

M: Hi, I’m Marie..

P: How do I do this? [Laugh]

M: And I like long walks on the beach, oh no that’s dating, shit.

P: [Laugh]

M: You did the same thing you moved to London.

P: Yeah, that was one of my big moments for me. I was actually on my way to the continent, I was going to Paris that was my goal. I wanted to work in Paris, but I landed in London. And my beautiful, lovely, wonderful friend Adam was living in London at the time and he was already established in a house and long story short, my trip to Paris never happened because I got to London. I got into the house and they were like ‘dude there’s a room here, you could possibly stay here’ and all of a sudden I had work. I was like, Oh, looks like I’m staying in London then. And those guys were my chosen family overseas and we had a Skippy house. We had one Scottish girl on one English girl, but we were predominantly Australians and it was kooky, crazy blend of people but it worked and it gave me a support network so that I felt like I had that instant crew and friendship around me. In a city like London, really important.

M: I think it’s interesting that as we’ve gotten more money, we tend to move to single living. Living by ourselves like that’s an achievement to have a place of your own and the implications of that are that we can be really lonely.

P: [Laughter]

M: It’s actually really bad, so I don’t know whether we’ve put value on the wrong thing. We’ve spoken before about success and the..

P: Markers that we achieve or aspire to.

M: You know, having a house by yourself shows that you’ve really made it. I just think maybe communal living is actually the way to go. I think that sometimes, I think ‘My God I’m a 47 year old man and I’m still in a share house. But at the end of it, it works and I enjoy it, and it is nice sometimes to come home on your own as I said, and my housemate’s are going to be killing me here. [Laugh] But it is also really lovely sometimes to come home and go ‘Hi, and sit down and all of a sudden there’s a bottle of wine open and there’s pizza in the oven and you chill out and all of a sudden it’s 2 o’clock in the morning and you go ‘oh we’ve just talked the night away.

M: Which is lovely. Alright, well, that’s all we have time for today, unfortunately.

P: Awe.. sad.

M: So 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 marieskelton.com, a site about how to find balance, happiness and resilience in your life, including some really practical tips and resource is to get you started on your happiness journey.

P: Yay.

M: Until next time.

P: Choose happiness!

[Happy exit music]

Related content: Read Moving On article How To Make Friends As An Adult, listen to our Podcast: The Benefits of Volunteering (E22)

The Importance of Having Fun In Your Life with Dr Mike Rucker (E27)

by

Happiness for Cynics

In this week’s episode, we talk to Dr Mike Rucker about the importance of having fun in your life and how it improves your overall wellbeing.

One of the narratives that I like to talk about is productivity porn or hustle porn. We get caught up in this notion that we have to devote our lives to work and that should be our purpose. And we’re just not wired for that.

Mike Rucker

About Dr Mike Rucker

Mike Rucker is a thought leader in the field of health and wellness, specifically regarding tactics to attract and motivate people towards healthier behaviours. He has worked with Universal Studios, Sony, Red Bull, and Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, among others.

In 2016, he was named one of the top 50 influencers in digital health by Onalytica. He has a Ph.D., is a charter member of the International Positive Psychology Association, and a member of the American Psychological Association.

Find Mike at:

Keep an eye out in 2021 for Mike’s new book!

Transcript

M: You’re listening to the Podcast Happiness for Cynics. Each week we will bring you the latest news and research in the world of Positive Psychology otherwise known as happiness. I’m Marie Skelton a writer and speaker focused on change and resilience my co-host Pete is a bundle of joy but he’s off doing something fabulous I’m sure because today’s episode is all about bringing fun into your life and to discuss that we went straight to the source with an interview with Dr. Mike Rucker who has the coolest title ever, he is a fun expert. So, let’s get to this.

[Intro Music]

M: Mike Rucker is a thought leader in the field of health and wellness, specifically regarding tactics to attract and motivate people towards healthier behaviours. In 2016 he was named one of the Top 50 influencers in Digital Health by Onalytica. He has a PhD, is a Charter member of the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA) and a member of the American Psychological Association. He’s worked with Universal Studios, Sony, Red Bull and Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, among others. And although he’s passionate about many more things than I can fit into this short bio; today he joins us to talk about having fun and improving people’s overall well-being. Thanks, Mike, for joining us on happiness for cynics. I’m so excited to have you on the show.

Mike: Thanks so much for having me.

M: So, I’m keen to start by asking you how you got involved in studying the science of fun.

Mike: So… so as you mentioned in the bio at the onset of the positive psych movement, I mean, I guess, Csikszentmihalyi and flow and all of that kind of thing predated the IPPA. But when Marty Seligman’s book Authentic Happiness came out, that was really the onset of, you know, popular psychology, becoming popular, Sorry excuse me positive psychology, becoming popular.

Mike: And I was caught up in that movement. So I became a Charter member of the IPPA and study diligently Seligman, Csikszentmihalyi and others and a lot of the things that you discuss on your podcast, things like gratitude and kindness and so you know, I have been practising those tools for quite some time, but in 2016 kind of a trifecta of bad news came my way. I’ve been a lifelong runner and found out that I was going to need a hip replacement. My little brother unexpectedly passed away from a pulmonary embolism and then my wife got a job offer that was going to take us out of state. So that kind of uprooted us from family and friends. And so a lot of what I had learned, you know, taking gratitude and things of that nature just weren’t working, you know, I was really trying to use mindset and the other things too and I found that there were a few things right, so I had used them for so long that it kind of, you know, they weren’t effective.

And then two, especially with the passing of my brother. I didn’t necessarily want to be happy. I didn’t feel like, you know, happiness was the right thing for me. It wasn’t part of my identity in that moment, but and I was also in the throws of finishing my dissertation. So, like any good academic went to the literature and started seeing if there was anything that I had missed and what I did find was a big research gap in this idea of fun and the fact that we have agency in any given moment to, you know, add positive valance, positive emotion to an experience, even if we’re not necessarily feeling like we want to be happy in that moment, so those two can co-exist or can exist separately.

Obviously you add enough indexing of fun experiences, and it tends to pull you out of despair, which is great. But I think the reason that I like looking at it as a separate construct from happiness is that it points to the fact that we have agency in any given moment to enjoy ourselves and find enjoyment. Even if you’re dealing with a loss or divorce or, you know, stress somewhere you don’t necessarily need to identify as happy to go and have fun. And then another thing I like about it in the context of positive psychology is that it’s action oriented.

I think happiness, you know, we’ve quantified it to some degree in psychology and so therefore we kind of use it as a measure, right? And we know from things like the Hedonic treadmill and Perceptual adaptation that a lot of our happiness is kind of based on circumstance, where we are in life and our comparison to our… socioeconomic class. Where fun really transcends a lot of that, but certainly people can use resource is to have fun if they have a lot of money. But often times, especially with children, we’ll see that completely transcend socioeconomic classes. Two puppies don’t really need to know each other to start playing. Two children, you know on the playground, don’t need to know each other’s background in the context, you know, to enjoy kicking the ball around. And as we grow older, we lose sight of that because we’re such victims to the judgement habit.

One of the things. One of the interventions that I like to talk about. I can’t take credit for it. It’s from IDL[?]. But it’s this idea where you take a bunch of people in a room and you have them pair up with strangers and you have them do caricatures of each other, which is a really fun assignment, right? Like everyone in the video, you can see is smiling and enjoying themselves, and then you’re asked to share that with your partner. And then you see this anxiety and fear almost instantly, right and no one cares, like there was no assumption that you are an artist, right? But this idea that now you’re going to be judged by someone that you don’t know. Even though the assignment was completely fun and whimsical sucks it out. And so if you practise having fun you can start to get some of that back. You can realise that you’re not being judged as much as you think you are. And so I have just really taken a liking to it. Not as making it overtly important, but something that we don’t think about enough.

M: Absolutely. I’d say that as an adult where, I don’t know, from childhood where we’re trained that growing up involves taking fun out of our lives and becoming serious. And so I find this idea fascinating. So happy to be talking to you about it.  

So what does the science say about what fun can do in our lives?

Mike: So, I think there’s a whole host of things, right? So we know that in fact, there’s a recent study that shows the more spontaneous we are, the more that we kind of look for the spices of life can lead to happiness. Another thing about having a deliberate fun is I think you are able to circumvent the Hedonic treadmill if you do it mindfully, right. A lot of things that we pursue are based on keeping up with the Joneses and things that we think are fun or we’re kidding ourselves. But when we take a more mindful approach to it, fun, pure elation and really enjoying something that is true to your soul is [it] ads gains to our life like episodically we have these indexes that we can relish were sort of chasing happiness.

I think we’re starting to see more of that it can lead to negative outcomes because what happens is especially if you’re doing it in the context of a clinical setting. You take these assessments like the PERMA or whatever it is and it says ‘Oh, you know, you’re not where you want to be’, and so that then becomes part of your identity, right? As soon as you get the results, you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m not happy’ where fun is so immersive that, you know, almost anybody can do it. And so in that context, that’s why I believe it’s important.

M: So can I can paraphrase and correct me if I’m wrong here.

Mike: Yes.

M: You can’t chase happiness, but you can chase fun and fun will bring you happiness, at least in the short term.

Mike: Yeah, and I would be careful because chasing happiness can lead to escapism. And there’s good escapism and there’s bad, right? And so you know, bad is coping and certainly, you know, we all need to cope and so having a bit of fun, It’s not necessarily chasing it, but there are people. I have interviewed a gentleman by the name of Chip Conly and he’s, are you familiar?

M: No, not with Chip. I’ll have to look him up.

Mike: He might be more U.S. centric, but he, he’s an entrepreneur by trade, he started a hotel chain called Joie de Vivre. But he’s also he either is or was on the governing body of Burning Man. And so we talked about this idea, folks that chase festivals. I’m sure you have the same phenomenon in Australia. And so that really is chasing fun, right? And that can lead to, you know some really bad things. And so the idea is that that fun is all encompassing like a lot of times when I have these discussions, especially because some of my earlier work, you know, I have blogged things like optimise fun, things of that nature, which when I find the time, I’ll rewrite because the idea there wasn’t necessarily to say that we should have a life full of fun. It was that we’re facing, you know, burnout at rates that we’ve never seen before, right? The World Health Organisation has now categorised it as a global epidemic. And after Covid, who even knows, right? Because that was in 2019. So, like, you know, we know people are losing their asses right now.

[Laughter]

Mike:  So, idea is you know, to add it [fun] back into your lives to loop back to something that you said a lot of us as adults have moved away from it because social norms or especially one of the narratives that I like to talk about is productivity, porn or hustle porn. You know, we get caught up in this notion that, you know, we have to devote our lives to work and that should be our purpose. And we’re just not wired for that. We need downtime and leisure.

It’s extremely important, I think in oceana you guys take it a little bit better than us. I remember I did a stint at Christ Church at Lincoln University and you could actually major in leisure which I thought was awesome.

M: Ha ha.

Mike: But, you know, I think everywhere, certainly here in the U.S. But I think everywhere we’re just finding that people aren’t using their paid time off. They have a sense of duty. So they think, especially folks in my age range that are caught in what it was called the sandwich generation. Or you have kids and you have to look, look after your parents that, you know people will feel guilty even if they are engaging in a night out, which is just not right.

So you know you have 168 hours in a week, and I think if you can’t find one or two where you’re actually finding pleasure out of that, that’s meaningful to you, that isn’t [good], You know at the sake of, you know like playing with your children and then kind of, you know, even though that could be fun, I think a lot of people are doing it out of a sense of duty and are on their phone really the whole time. So they think they’re playing with their kids, but if they look at it critically, they’re not really having fun there. Half of their brain is at work and the other half is treating that hour as obligation yet they’ll kind of log it in their brain as play.

M: Yep. Or it, it’s another list item that you’ve got to check off in the week, you know. It becomes a stress to have fun.

Mike: Yeah

M: So what are some tips then for listeners for how to introduce more fun into their lives? How do you do it? So it’s not just another thing that you’ve got to add into your week and another expert telling us ‘here’s something else you need to do to make your life more full and meaningful.’

Mike: Yeah, I’m glad you asked that question because… I’m writing a book right now called The Fun Habit. It’s coming out next year, and I think in the original manuscript you were exactly right. Like we realised, I’m working with a development editor, and it was, this is just, a lot of these tactics are giving people just another thing to do and that certainly was implied. And so we’re reworking it because you’re right. If it’s a burden than it’s the scenario with childcare. It’s the same thing.

So what I suggest is you know 168 hours isn’t a lot right to really be mindful on any given week. And so I suggest taking a look, doing a really general time audit, you don’t have to be completely thorough but investigating in one week’s time, what you’re doing and kind of logging it within four different categories.

I call it the PLAY model, so it’s:

  • Pleasing;
  • Living;
  • Agonising; Or
  • Yielding.

And without going too deep into it, you can often find those opportunities where you think that you’re having fun but changing things up just a little bit. You can actually enjoy yourself. So in the scenario with the child you commit to that hour and that you might do something using self-determination theory, where you both have some autonomy on what it is, right. So both the child and the adult will agree because, it’s funny I talk about it in the book, but sometimes if you don’t do that extra step and you  do it, something that the adult thinks the child will have fun that could backfire. I did that one time. I took my daughter to a lantern festival. It was kind of a father daughter date, and I really wanted to sort of be this reflective spiritual experience. And she really just wanted to light as many lanterns off as possible, right?

M: [Laugh]

Mike: So that’s where I failed at my own advice, because I was looking to have fun. But I didn’t. It wasn’t really inclusionary. It was more prescriptive, right? So, but you can also do that. I don’t want this to all be parent centric. I think, you know, let’s say you’re a single individual. If it could be making sure that you sit down at lunch and use that opportunity to reconnect with a friend or whatever it is.

But often times what people think you know is leisure, like binge watching a show that they don’t really care about can be replaced with something more meaningful. And so I want to be careful there, too, because it certainly is meaningful if you’re watching it with, you know, it’s something that you really enjoy on. You can think back on it, but a good litmus test for that is, you know, any sort of activity that if you went back to savour or relish it, would you remember what it was about? You know, a lot of times if people are being honest with themselves. You know, social media viewing or TV doesn’t fit in that category. A lot of times it does. I always like to preface it because I’ll get emails that say ‘Why are you demonising media?’ And I don’t think that’s the case. I think a lot of people do have fun, you know, engaging with content and things of that nature. But a lot of us do it to kind of placate to you know, to distract us from other things.

M: And I think again it comes back to mindful viewing and being mindful about what you choose to spend your time on.

Mike: Or if you’re in the company of a good partner, you know, enjoying that time you might not remember the show but you’ll remember that you guys laughed and drank wine and whatever it is, you know.

M: Yeah, definitely. So your acronym there and again I don’t want to give away the book. We want our readers to actually go and buy the book. The acronym you used was PLAY to take that a little bit further and move away from the acronym. How are play and fun interlinked? Or are they? Have you done any research into how they’re tied?

Mike: Yes, they’re definitely different. And so, but obviously they come up right, because you’re going to have fun doing a whole gambit of different things and not necessarily playing, but play therapy, engaging in various types of play. [Dr] Stuart Brown is kind of a godfather of that I’m not sure if you’re familiar with his work.

But because even that, you know, since it’s not really my expertise but reading his book, you know the amount of ways that you can slice and dice play. I found fascinating, right?

There’s child play.

There’s, you know, improv[ization] play.

There’s sport play;

So, you know play, you could fill up a few of these podcasts with just what play is because we often just think about it as being childlike with either other adults or with kids. But play as sort of a, you know, construct. Wellbeing is multifaceted, but fun can be, you can enjoy things outside of place, so that’s where the two are delineated.

M: Okay, great. So you mentioned your book. Is there anything else that you can give our listeners a sneak peek about, about what the book is about or the dust cover overview?

Mike: Sure. Well, it’s really just a comprehensive look at fun the way we described it, I think reintroducing folks to the fact that they do have some agency. And then one of the things that we didn’t really talk about, but I think is important is this idea of time affluence, right? You know, we talked about affluence and, you know, personal brand and money, especially in you know, the context of the Internet, right?

Everyone is always trying to sell you the next hustle, but time affluence is something that’s really important and people take for granted right, because often times, especially if you go back and do that time audit, you’ll realise that you’re giving away a lot of your time that you don’t really need to, you know, one of things that we talked about in the book certainly is things like email where just a couple of strategies there, you know, and I don’t go too deep into productivity, but there are a lot of things that you think are yielding some sort of output and it ends up just really making yourself believe that you’re busy and it’s not really contributing, so those are opportunities that you could put on pause or potentially take away from your day to day and implement better uses of time.

M: Great. I’m looking forward to seeing it come out. Now you have such an impressive bio and such a broad sweep of experience, and I know that you’re also heavily involved in the health and tech or health-tech and product design areas. Do you know of any apps that you could recommend to help adults bring more fun or play into their lives?

Mike: So there are a couple, I don’t have any that I’m affiliated with. I play with them all the time as you alluded to, right. So the one that my kids are having just a great time with right now is called Marco Polo, are you familiar with it?

M: No and look I’m really personally interested in the answer to this question as well. So Marco Polo?

Mike: Yeah, it’s a way where you can kind of, it’s similar to TikTok, but more personal, where you do something silly and then you kind of send it over to your friend and they can respond. So it’s a great way, especially during Covid for family members that are whimsical or silly to sort of, you know, just like the Marco Polo game kind of bounce stuff back and forth. So that’s a great one for having fun. And then the one that I’ve been enjoying right now is out of Duke [Behavioural Economics Lab] called Fabulous and it’s a habit changing app. So it’s a little outside the bounds of fun, per se, but it has a bunch of really cool sort of interventions and one of the you know, it’s got to slick UI [User Interface], I’m having a lot of fun with it [laugh].

M: Thank you so much. So thank you for all of your time. We’re almost at the 20 minute mark. But before we go, how can people find out a bit more about you? And where should we look out for your book?

Mike: Thank you for this Opportunity.

So my website’s michaelrucker.com

And then I’m also on all the social channels on Instagram under the wonder of fun. And on Twitter under perform better.

It’s kind of an old handle, but I didn’t decide not to switch it up yet, He he.

M: Sure, no worries. And where will you be launching your book?

Mike: Yes. So it got picked up by Simon and Schuster and they’re looking for a cue for 2021 pub date. So in about a year and a half it should come out.

M: No worries. Okay, we’ll keep an eye out for it then. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate you talking to us.

Mike: This was great. Thank you for having me.

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