Unapologetically Marie

Writer, podcaster, mental health advocate

Home » happiness for cynics

happiness for cynics

Why You Need to Stop Skipping Your Lunch Break (E24)

by

Happiness for Cynics Podcast

Many studies have shown that prolonged sitting is the new smoking. Yet despite it being really bad for our health, so many of us don’t take lunch breaks! Join us as we discuss the importance of taking a lunch break, and how to give your brain a rest, get some sun and exercise and eat more mindfully.

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 poster hanger, towel folder and furniture re-arranger each week will bring to you the latest news and research in the field of positive psychology, otherwise known as happiness.

M: You can find us at marieskelton.com, which is a site about how to find balance, happiness and resilience in your life. We talk about a lot of same research we cover here on the podcast, including some really practical tips for bringing joy and happiness into your life.

P: So on today’s episode, which is all about:

M: Taking a lunch break.

[Happy Intro Music]

M: So Pete. We need to take a lunch break.

P: Oh, I’m bad at this.

M: I’m really bad at it too. Well, no, I swing, I swing. I have no what’s the word I’m looking for? Discipline.

P: I don’t believe that for a second. [Laugh]

M: No, I really have no discipline. I could be really good at this I’m a lunch break taker.

P: Hi, my name’s Marie Skelton lunch break taker.

M: I haven’t had a lunch break for seven years.

P: [Laugh] Yay Marie! Can I get a t-shirt?

M: [Laugh]

So, according to NPR [National Public Radio], the majority of Americans don’t take their lunch breaks.

And you’ve got an Australian stat too, don’t you?

P: Yes, I do.

A lot of Australians don’t take them, either.

Almost one in three [Australians], 28% of people habitually eating at their desk and 33% of people are skipping lunch entirely more than once a week.

M: I’ve definitely been there and actually since I’ve started working from home. So since Covid and self-isolation, I’ve become really bad, really, really bad at it.

P: See, I find that interesting because at home I naturally want to hang out in the kitchen. It’s my happy place, so I I’m very good at getting my..

M: I’m the exact opposite, I’m like I have to go to the kitchen, if I don’t cook my husband’s going to divorce me. It’s been too long.

[Laughter]

P: I’m strange, I use cooking to relax me. So the kitchen’s a happy place for me. But yeah, I often will if I am staying home, I’ll often get up go for a cup of tea, get up have lunch, make some lunch or microwave something.

M: Yeah so I’ll look at the clock and it’ll be two o’clock and I’ll be like crap and I’ll go grab something. I’ve been a lot better, actually diet wise lately, so I’m having salads and doing a good job eating well, but I will bring it back to my desk and eat it while I juggle phone calls and everything.

P: I’m guilty of that as well, being a small business owner and working on a client based schedule, so I’m terrible at keeping my clients to a count and I always go overtime with them. I found that I actually for many years didn’t have a lunch break at all. Then I started allocating a lunch break that was 15 minutes.

M: [Laugh]

P: Woah, go Petie! [Laugh]

I’ve recently increased that to 45[minutes], which is much better because there’s 10 minutes at the beginning of that and there’s five minutes at the end where you’re kind of preparing for the next client or the next client turns up early. So you know, you do get chipped away a little bit, so it probably ends up being about 20/25 minutes. But it is really, really important to schedule it in and what we’re probably going to come to in terms of diet and so forth is making sure that you’re prepared so that you can make maximize that time. So I always bring my lunch in from home, that I’ve cooked and it’s in the microwave on the way before I’ve even said goodbye to the last client.

M: Yeah, I found that I ate a lot more healthily when I brought my own food in definitely, but it encouraged me in the office to then eat it at my desk. Yeah, so going out for lunch made me have to leave the office, and while I was out, I might pop past a shop and have a look or pick something up or just go sit in the park to eat it. And I have to say the times where I have felt the happiest and the most satisfied with life are the times where I’ve had a really good balance at work between motivating, challenging work but enough time to take a lunch break.

P: And it’s really important for your work productivity as well.

M: Yep, absolutely. So there’s three things that not taking a lunch break impacts on:

  • Firstly, your physical health. For a number of years now, people have been saying prolonged sitting is the new smoking.

P: I’m doing this every day.

M: It’s really bad for your physical health.

  • Secondly, your brain needs rest.

P: Absolutely.

M: Particularly for white collar type work. If you’re writing and thinking for a lot of what you do, 9 to 5, you need to give it a little bit of time to rest.

  • And then the third thing is you’ll eat more mindfully if you get away from that activity that you’re doing and sit and enjoy your lunch.

P: Yes.

M: And so if you’re struggling with weight or weight loss. Eating mindfully is one of the biggest new trends in weight loss. It’s not about what you eat. It’s about more mindful about how you eat is the latest thing there. So definitely taking a lunch break can have a huge impact on your weight loss journey.

P: I want to pick you up on that second point as well Marie, in terms of the productivity and having the break. There is a lot of science that supports the fact that we need to stimulate our brains in different ways to allow different pathways to be accessed and allow different synapses to open up. So frontal lobe, parietal lobe, accessing the different lobes makes for a healthy brain. And if you are obsessed over a problem or an issue and you’re focused and you’re inside that issue for over an hour, I can’t quote the study because I didn’t have time to look this up. I know this is true, so you’ve just got to blind faith here.

[Laughing]

P: Walking away from the problem and then coming back, allows you to reset.

M: Yep.

P: It allows new ideas to drop in and allows you to come back and perhaps look at the issue in a different way, which results in a better, it brings about a better result.

M: Also what we were all told, when we’re studying for exams at school, come back to it. Yes, because the more you focus on something the less likely you are to solve it. But the other thing is, we have natural body rhythms and –

P: – Circadian rhythms.

M: Yes, that’s day and night time sleep. We’ve also got a 90 minute blocks of time that your body goes through during the day. Right? So again, there’s so many different studies and different research about whether your body clock or your brain in their own different times at times can function. Some people say, for only as much as 20 minutes at a time. If you’re fully focused. So again it depends who you look at, whose study.

P: Yep

M: And again the other side is, they say take a break. Now what does that mean? So some studies have definitely shown that just a few minutes is enough to help you reset and go again. But taking as little as 20 minutes in one study has been shown to increase your productivity for the entire day. So if you can’t do anything else, take a 20 minute lunch break.

P: Yep. And the idea of having 20 minutes is, it’s long enough to actually allow yourself to be distracted and to re-energise and to be distracted by something else. And getting up and physically getting away from the desk is really important there, because walking around is going to stimulate a whole heap of body things that go on that create chemical reactions and allow your brain to focus. But it’s allowing your physicality to override what’s going on in the brain. And it wakes everything up gets things stimulated and moving.

M: I think it also resets you. So as someone who’s been through burnout at work through a particularly busy period in Corporate Australia. So I was working for a large corporate we we’re going through a royal commission I was working in public affairs.

P: He he.. [Laugh]

M: Things were shit.

[Laughter]

M: Right? And I just felt like I didn’t want to go take lunch because I didn’t want to be there for another 30 minutes at the end of the day. It just meant, I wouldn’t get through everything, and I’d be there until eight o’clock, not seven thirty or whatever it was. So the logic made sense and I was still just slugging through stuff that I needed to get through. But what that lunch break does is it stops that day to day build of stress, the cortisol levels that build over time. It’s a circuit breaker, and it takes you back to zero again. So the irony of that burnout period is that I knew I needed to exercise, but I stopped exercising. I knew I needed to eat well because it was going to be a very stressful year… or three.

[Laughter]

M: And I started taking getting take out. I didn’t have time to prep my meals. I knew I needed to just get out and get some sun even.

P: Yes.

M: Get outside and to take that mental break. And I just felt that I couldn’t and lo and behold, burnout.

P: Funny that.

[Laughter]

M: We know it and I think that’s the trick, really is actually finding a way to dig yourself out of that hole when you know you’re in it.

P: And that’s where the physical thing can come out, getting yourself…

M: But even 20 minutes, and you can combine them all. Get outside, eat a salad or some protein and vegetables. Eat something healthy-ish.

P: Eat something you’ve cooked yourself. It’s as simple as that.

M: If you’ve got time or find time. Or buy it, I mean there’s plenty of options in most big cities or food courts. You can find healthy food and then walk for the rest of the lunchtime. Get out in the sun or through the mall if it’s raining and walk.

P: I’ve actually found that I do that myself. If now that I have my prolonged lunch break [laugh], I actually go. Oh, I’ve had my lunch, I’ve not done anything, I’ll go around the block and it is just a simple walk around the block, and it’s just to get out, get a different stimulus, get outside even though it’s in CBD and it might be a bit smoggy and so forth. It’s still, it’s still better than staying in those four walls because you feel like you’ve had a change and then you can come back for the afternoon session and go hard again.

M: And just getting your muscles moving.

P: Mmm really important.

M: Absolutely so they say sitting is the new smoking. So it is definitely proven to not be as bad a smoking. But just like everyone jumped on the idea that smoking was bad and we saw all those horrible ads come out. Australia’s really bad for shock ads. I’m surprised we haven’t seen sitting shock ads. What do you make of that?

P: I don’t know. It’s probably not dramatic enough.

M: [Laugh] A whole bunch of people just sitting around, “oh the horror!”

P: “Oh the humanity!”

M: The diseases and illnesses that are tied to long term sitting include cancer, heart disease and type two diabetes. And the research shows that the effects of long term sitting are not reversible through exercise or other good habits.

P: That’s a very interesting one.

M: Can’t take these [away].

P: You can’t get it back.

M: And It’s also going to take time off the end of your life. So morbidity rates with not being able to move, comes back to that lovely little test you can do about getting sitting cross legged on the floor.

M: Yes, this is a good one.

P: And getting up without using your hands.

M: Yes, so if anyone hasn’t seen this, they give this test to people in their sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties, and they ask you to sit down on the floor with your legs crossed. And then if you can kind of rock forward onto your feet and get your body up into a standing position without putting your hands down, then you’ve got the core strength and flexibility that you should be able to live far longer into the future.

P: And have a better quality of life in your senior years and because it’s the ability to be able to get yourself up that has complete links with morbidity, with heart disease with diabetes and it also [is good] in terms of range of motion and being able to look after yourself in case you fall.

M: Well it actually shows that you are less likely to fall because you’ve got the body strength.

P: Exactly.

M: And once someone who’s elderly falls and starts losing their balance, then it’s a very quick decline from that point forward. Generally.

P: Yes

M: The other thing that adds onto that is the injuries that come with the fall. The broken hips or legs etc. Also not good.

P: Yeah

M: Anyway this is a complete sidebar.

So taking lunch breaks.

P: [Laugh]

M: Maybe we can all sit down and practise standing up…

[Laughter]

P: with your lunch!

[Laughter]

M: So what are some good things to do, even if you only have 20 minutes, we’ve talked about a few of them already. So if you’re going to take a lunch break, you’re busy, you’re stressed. How do you maximise that 20 minutes that you make time for, if you can only make time for 10 minutes. What do you do?

P: Prepare. You’ve got to be prepared.

M: That takes more time Pete.

P: No, what I’m saying is that if you know you’ve got 20 minutes for a lunch break. Then you need to pre-prepare your meals. You need to have that installed so that you don’t waste 15 minutes wandering around the food court going, ‘Oh do I have curry? Or do I have sushi? Do I have curry? Do I have sushi?

M: Well, see my mind would say prepare before I leave the office to go get sushi.

P: Well that works. That’s still preparing.

M: Straight downstairs, get something that’s not deep fried.

P: You know what you’re going to have. You know what you’re going to have and you’re setting up and you have a goal in place. So you’re not going to be distracted by the deep fried southern chicken burger which may have come to $10.50 from Betty’s burgers today.

[Laughter]

M: Oh I love Betty’s Burgers.

Which is still okay, in moderation.

P: Absolutely.

M: Alright. So you’re saying prepare. I’m saying get outside and mindfulness. So once you’re outside, if you are struggling to find 20 minutes a day to go and have a lunch break and you need to maximize the time that you spend then:

  1. Make sure that you refuel, obviously, and the healthier the better, as we all know. But refueling is refueling.
  2. Secondly, get some sun if you can.
  3. Thirdly, while you’re out, take a moment to look at nature. So wherever you are it’s about stopping and smelling the roses or at least noticing them.

P: Yes

M: And that is a really good reset for your brain. So this is that mental reset. If you go out and you rush from shop to shop and you have to pick up milk for breakfast tomorrow and you get your food and you make it back. And oof, you’re out of breath and it’s been 20 minutes. There’s some definite positive benefits from a physical and recharge perspective, but not necessarily from a mental health perspective.

P: Okay.

M: So if you’ve just rushed through your lunch break and it’s just another tick box activity for you that you had to get done and that you had to make sure happened in your day. You’re not resting your brain. If it’s a stress to get it done. So just taking those moments to enjoy the sun on your face or to stop and smell or notice the roses or even the grass.

P: It’s funny when I’m like working in the CBD. I often find myself searching for green space because there’s, where I am, which is down towards King Street Warf, it’s actually a bit of a walk to get to Hyde Park and that’s really the only green space in that corner of the CBD. There’s blue space, which is down by Cockle bay, which is fine, but to be actually able to sit and have your lunch in a green area. It’s actually not that easy in the CBD of Sydney.

M: And to get sun at the same time, you’re in shade most of the time.

P: Yeah.

M: Absolutely, if you’re in the middle, it’s a decent hike.

P: It’s where roof gardens would be really advantageous.

M: Yeah, we don’t do roof gardens in Australia.

P: We don’t make enough. I don’t think we do to take enough advantage of our rooves in Sydney. I think that we’re falling short on that one a little bit. Maybe another episode, [Laugh].

But I do want to clock one thing about exercising in your lunch break.

M: Yes

P: Now I was shocked by this one. According to my stats, only 7% of us use the lunch break to exercise, which I really didn’t think I thought would be a lot higher in Australia.

M: Hold on look, it takes women, and men, but mainly women 30 minutes to get ready in the morning, at least often an hour, depending on what your hair rituals are. If you’ve showered and washed your hair, which you have to do after you sweat. Okay before you go, especially corporate. Before you go back into an office, it’s let me just say it’s rude if you don’t. Let me just put that out there. If you do now shower after you exercise and you come back in the office. Don’t come near me. It is not something that everyone wants to smell in their two o’clock meeting.

P: [Laugh], no definitely not.

M: So I fully understand why people wouldn’t exercise at lunch because you just don’t have time to turn it around. You’ve got to get there and back. You’ve got to do the exercise, whatever it is and you’ve got, if you’re doing something that makes you sweaty; if you’re going to go do a nice stretching class.

P: You can still sweat.

M: A nice, light stretching class. Then maybe you could make that work without the shower and all the prep to get back into your corporate attire that goes afterwards.

P: I still, I was a lunchtime exerciser. I would duck down in between 11 and 12:30-

M: -That’s an hour and a half.

P: So 90 minutes and it didn’t always happen, but yeah again it was about planning that in. So that was a Tuesday and Thursday thing, and I knew that Tuesdays and Thursdays I took 90 minutes, again scheduling and preparing and that was my days exercise. Where I did go down and do some exercise in that time and then come back so that I was ready and prepped to go again in the afternoon.

M: I think that’s lunch break Nirvana to be able to do that.

P: [Laugh]

M: But then you’ve also got to find time to eat as well, and that’s the potential downside to putting exercise in.

P: And that’s what I wasn’t doing as well. In that I was grabbing food on the fly and shoving it in and half eating lunch and then waiting for the next client and half eating it after that. Yeah, maybe I wasn’t quite clocking that in the right way, but it felt like I was.

M: Well look I think it never hurts to get some exercise in at lunchtime. To get some exercise in, in general.

P: Well, again, it helps your mental energy as well.

M: Yes. Oh, so good for your happiness levels in general. All right, well, I think that’s about it for today.

P: Done.

M: Thank you for joining us. If you do want to hear more, please remember to subscribe and like this podcast.

P: Stay happy, people.

Related content: Listen to our Podcast: Wellbeing and Your Environment (E21)

Please note that I get a small commission if you buy something from my site. Your support helps to keep this site going, at no additional cost to you. Thanks!

Designing Happy Cities (E19)

by

Happiness for Cynics podcast

In the first of this two-part series on happy cities, this week we explore how to design happy cities. We look at the research from the Global Happiness Council’s annual Global Happiness and Wellbeing Policy Report, and discuss some great examples from around the world of cities which are getting it right.

Episode notes

In this week’s episode, Pete talked about how bicycle lanes are great for city living. This is the book he mentioned.

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, a banana bread maker, wall art hanger and occasional wedgie applicator. Each week we will bring you the latest news and research in the world of positive psychology, otherwise known as happiness.  

M: You can find us at marieskelton.com, which is a site about how to find balance, happiness and resilience in your life. We talk about a lot of the same research we cover here on the podcast, including some really practical tips for bringing joy and happiness into your life. 

P: So on to today’s episode, which is all about Happy Cities.  

[Happy intro Music] 

P: So Marie, Happy Cities. What are we talking about?  

M: This is such a hot topic right now. I’m so happy that we’re doing this. So there’s two things that are converging to macro level.  

P: Convergence, we like convergence were converging. 

M: And macro, that’s important. So firstly, we’re seeing huge advancements in technologies in particular the Internet of things, and that’s allowing us to know so much more data and know so much more about what our people are doing and how they’re moving in, how they’re living than we’ve ever had before. 

P: So “big brother” is a good thing.  

M: It can be. I’m not 100% sold, but I think- 

P: There’s a practical application of the “big brother” [concept]. It’s actually working for us.  

M: Yes, exactly. And then the second thing that’s happening is there’s an increasing understanding that human well-being matters, and we’ve mentioned it before. But people are saying to come to the realisation that economic prosperity without well-being is a bit hollow.  

So this really started picking up steam in 2015 when the UN announced its 2030 agenda for sustainable development and that was adopted by all UN member states. And in it, there’s 17 sustainable development goals which aim to bring peace and prosperity to all the world and its people. Now amongst those 17 goals, there’s two that in particular apply to happy cities.  

The first is goal number three, which is good health and well-being. And then there’s also number 11 which is sustainable cities and communities. And when it comes to cities and communities, a lot of the UN plan focuses on getting the basics right, like proper waste management, eradicating slums and providing clean air. But it does also touch on some of the topics we’re going to cover today, like access to green spaces and good public transport, which are key to happy cities. 

So for today’s episode, rather than focusing on the UN sustainable development goals, we have taken a different document, which is a bit more relevant for us in Australia because we have done some really good work to get those basics right. And now we’re talking about what’s next. So the report we’re looking at is the Global Happiness Council’s annual global happiness and well-being policy report.  

So Pete, maybe you can start with why we should be focusing on Happy Cities, not just happy people?  

P: I love that we’re focusing on Happy Cities. I think this is a really interesting segway in global awareness, really, that we’re no longer just talking about economic development and GDP and stuff this whole movement around ‘let’s create good things for people and for all people’, which I think is really important. That’s a point we will come back to later.  

If we’re looking at Happy Cities, what makes a happy city just a bit of background; we’re using cities more. So the human population on a global scale is now becoming more urbanised. Since 2007 we actually have more urbanised population globally than we do rural. So we’ve hit 55% of global population in 2007, live in cities.  

M: I think that’s a really, really good stat to show how, as a society or society’s globally, we’re evolving from an agrarian, hunter/gatherer/farmer to industrial, which did bring a lot more people into the cities and made the need for cities greater. To a service economy now, where definitely everyone is in the city for right now because we haven’t quite gotten there yet, But it’ll be really interesting to see if gig economy and, you know, especially post Covid[19], where we know now that we can work from home and a lot of industries whether we will still need cities as much in the future. 

P: It’s interesting because the predictions are that in 2050 we’re going to have 2/3 of the world’s population in cities, seven billion people as opposed to right now, which is just 4.1 billion people. These are the predictions we’re using cities more and that, the attraction of living in the city is greater. So, interestingly enough, and I found this this odd that as we grow older and as we grow wealthier, we tend to gravitate towards cities. I would have thought the opposite, but it’s not the case. We like being in cities. Cities provide opportunity. They provide better health systems support and all that sort of stuff. So we’re more drawn towards them. 

M: And also more leisure activities. You can always go to the beach or go somewhere quiet for a weekend. I think that on a day to day basis, having access to more people and cultural activities when you’re retired becomes more important. 

P: It comes into the, into the factoring of what makes a happy city actually. When we- 

M: Tell us! Do tell us. 

P: Well actually, there are lots of different things. There’s, there’s the infrastructure. There’s things like parks, cycle paths, piazzas, green and blue spaces, culture. So the art culture, HUGE, massive, so big!  

M: For you the art culture is huge. But for others it can make a break a city, the culture, and it’s not necessarily art, but it is the culture of a city.  

P: Definitely but art plays a big part in that. I’ll come back to that later. So these are all in addition to services such as waste management, sewerage and public transport, which is another big one. 

M: Public transport’s important. 

P: Yeah, it’s a huge one. In terms of the global happiness report, there’s two aspects of this report that come out really, really strongly.  One is that there is a design element of city, so things that we put in place to create happy cities. And then there’s the enablers of city happiness. So I think for this podcaster we are actually going to separate into two different podcasts. 

M: Yes, you’re listening to part one today.  

P: Today we’re gonna talk about the design. So what goes into the designing of a good city and how to create that. And in the report they come up with six different areas of [what a] city needs to create a happy city.  

M: All right, well, how about you start us off with the 1st 3 Pete?  

P: All right. So we’ll talk about: 

1. Urban design and place making 

This is city planning, connected spaces and places that create a good city. Creating and using functional space as well. Now I’m going to launch right into this one with an example. Bike lanes, bike lanes, they’re the new black. It’s the thing that everybody is being measured by in terms of their city ability is, do you have a bike lane concept and our bikes able to operate within your city? And it’s a big one because bicycle riding connects communities, so it makes people able to get around. Now, in terms of a city that doesn’t have good public transport, doesn’t have good access. If you can ride somewhere, to get to the grocery shop, to go and see friends, to hang out in the park, it makes a big difference to how you use a city.  

M: Let me add, if you can safely ride somewhere, no one would let their kid’s ride around Sydney, even though we have a bike lane or two every now and then, the bike lanes through the city are like, if you want death, go ride through Sydney CBD. 

P: [Laugh] that’s such a good point Marie, because there’s some gurus out there and there’s this couple Melissa and Chris Bruntlett, who come from Vancouver and they actually wrote a book on ‘Building the Cycling City: The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality’ and they actually talk about the safety of bike riding and how safe it is for a city to be bike riding in and of course, we all know Amsterdam has the best record. 

M: And Nordic, it’s the Nordic countries again.  

P: That do it well, yep. And it really makes a community come together. It provides accessibility, and, as you say, it brings people together because it’s safe and you could take families. 

M: So that was an example of, what was it? 

P: Design and place making. Designing a city. Examples of how to design a city to create good community interaction.  

The next one we look at.

2. Nature 

Huge, connecting with nature, contact with nature, easily accessible green and blue spaces. And when we talk about green and blue spaces, we’re talking about green spaces, which are obviously the parks, your centennial parks, your Hyde Park’s, you’re access to green spaces at the end of your street. 

M: And your natural bush land and forest areas depending on what country you’re in. 

P: Yep, all that sort of stuff. When we talk about blue spaces, I had to look this one up.  

M: Water.  

P: I know I didn’t think. I was just like what’s a blue space?  

M: [Laugh] It’s not a blue zone! 

P: That’s what I thought.  

M: It’s a bunch of old people… 

P: all hanging out in their bikinis.  

[Laughter] 

M: That would be Florida. 

P: Or Hampstead Heath in London.  

But blue space is access to water, which is hugely important and I actually did a lot of research into this in terms of water being included in a city scape. So water is really beneficial for inspiring awe, inspiration. It has a calming effect, has a white noise effect, and it actually brings down traffic noise.  

M: Yes  

P: I thought that was a really interesting point. So in a city scape water is hugely important for creating not only a visual area of interaction, but also auditory, so you can actually dull down the sounds of the city. And the other thing is it cools, and this is something that comes back to medieval times, in the 13th century in Spain, they used water to cool the streets of the city and having water features and there’s beautiful Andalusian fountains in the middle of the piazza or something. They weren’t just pretty, they were there for a function. But I thought that was an interesting aspect, that it has a function that’s not just pretty.  

M: Yeah, yeah.  

P: Really benefits us.  

Okay, moving on to number three. Let’s look at this one:  

3. Mobility 

And that is the ability to get around. So again, bike lanes as being bike lanes are the new black but we’re also looking in here, we’re looking at public transport, diversity of transport and this is a huge one in terms of the development of electronic vehicles and also automated vehicles, which- 

M: I can’t wait for flying cars!  

P: [Laugh] It’s all back to the future, and the future is here people [laugh]. 

M: It is! They exist! They’re being tested right now. 

P: They’re getting better and this is the funny thing, we had this conversation about a year ago. I Remember Marie, you were all pro automated vehicles. No way it’s going to cause accidents. People, I was wrong. 

M: Yes! 

P: The science says that the ability for automated vehicles to prevent accidents is much greater than human error. 

M: Uh huh, computers win again.  

P: Unfortunately… So in 2011 to 2015 electronic vehicle rates soared by 800 percent. Huge increases, and this is only going to get bigger. Technology is improving in the expansion of public transit networks, along with autonomous vehicles and electronic vehicles, is going. It’s going to be a thing of the future. Infrastructure is going to support that so shared public transport, variable transport, in terms of lane ways and arterial roads, which we’re seeing in Sydney at the moment with this whole West connects drama that we’ve all been going through. It’s the way of the future, unfortunately, and the future of mobility is going to be a massive indicator of smart cities and how a city can increase its happiness.  

M: And I think that newer cities are definitely much better placed because they’ve got wider roads and wider lane ways. So it is really tough in cities like Paris. We were there last year. They can’t put lifts in for people with disabilities into their subway systems because they’re underground is like Swiss cheese, right? And the whole thing is going to come falling down if they keep drilling too many holes in there. 

P: Sydney’s suffers from that a little bit as well. 

M: A little bit but we’ve definitely got accessibility down pat compared to a lot of other countries, but you’re really stuck with the age of the infrastructure that you’ve inherited. It’s like older companies right now that have a tech debt with stuff that they’ve been building on top of and on top of and on top of since the seventies compared to new entrants to the market, who come with fresh, clean technology that is only six months old, right? So for, for cities that are really old, this mobility piece becomes so much more costly and difficult to implement. 

P: But it’s going to make a difference to how people can use the city. That’s the whole point.  

M: Yeah, absolutely.  

P: Getting around a city and arterial roads are a really simple introduction to that. You can bypass the busy area of the city so that you can get across town.  

M: Absolutely. All right, we’re going to keep moving on and we’ll power through these last three in our last three minutes.  

So number four on the list of design elements that lead to Happy Cities is: 

4. Sustainability and partnerships.  

So this is one of the things I really liked about the UN sustainability goals is that Number 17 the last one on their list, talks about the need for partnership, and it’s a concept that’s definitely picked up steam over the last five years or so. The government can’t do it all, and there’s been some great examples of where government, academia, corporations and citizens are all coming together now to change our cities and to plan for the future and its, I think the only way that you get true innovation is in coming out of your bubble and your sector and what you know and partnering with other organisations that bring their worldview and they’re different perspectives to drive towards one common goal. So partnership is so key and there’s a great example in Halifax in Canada of some city councillors there and they get $94,000 a year to spend on city infrastructure projects and instead of just deciding that they’re gonna spend it on fountain’s because they’ve got water. 

P: [Laugh] they’re pretty. 

M: I mean, they’d freeze up in Halifax, or whatever it is, instead of sitting in a room with a bunch of councillors and deciding where to spend their money; each year, they have community organisations come in and set up a booth and the residents come in and they walk around and get a little pitch from each of the organisations and then they vote on their top five and so the community is then invested in whatever is developed. The community organisations get to meet the residents and government get to put money into things that the residents want. And it’s just a great little simple example of how you can bring three different communities together to achieve a common goal. 

P: And it’s also giving an empowerment to the people who occupy the city. They’re in charge of their future. And they’re making conscious decisions on it.  

M: Yes, and they’re more likely to use the end outcome.  

All right, so moving on: 

5. Culture. 

We mentioned culture. 

P: The artists have it.  

M: So this is about a city having a sense of uniqueness and having a soul. It is the soul of the city-  

P: and identity that is unique to that city.  

M: Yeah, definitely. So what we’re talking about here is everything from visuals, lights, arts, sounds, climate and people’s behaviour and attitude as well as their physical structures. So all of those things can contribute to a city’s culture. And you’ve been over, you’ve been to Vancouver, haven’t you?  

P: Not yet! I was supposed to go this year.  

M: OH! You were meant to go. 

P: Bloody Covid[19] My Canadian holiday has been cancelled. 

M: All right, I’m going to tell you about a great place called Granville Island from Vancouver. So in the seventies, it was, a dilapidated, industrial area, and the Vancouver government has taken it back and since then, invested a lot of money and I love their mission statement. So it’s “The most inspiring public place in the world.” Is their mission statement, and today it’s a fabulous, artistic and cultural hub. And it’s got public markets about 50 independent restaurants and also got about 300 businesses employing about 3000 people. And arguably many of Canada’s best artists and designers have their works displayed there or they’re selling there, and we went there a couple of years ago. It’s such a great place, such a great place. Now that is a great example of people coming together to create a space that Vancouver’s now so well known for. All tourists go there now and locals love it. Yes, so culture definitely matters. 

P: And I’m going to throw some stats in there. This is where I find a lot of information from the UK coming through. They’re very good at actually evaluating statistics for arts inclusion and there is an arts on prescription project, which comes from Cambridge in the UK. [Arts on Prescription program is based on a model developed in the UK whereby health professionals, including GPs, write prescriptions for their patients to participate in the arts.]  

They found that for an arts community that was actively involved out there in a cityscape:  

  • 71% decrease in feelings of anxiety,  
  • 73% falling depression and  
  • 76% of participants said their wellbeing was increased and they felt more socially included in a city. 

M: Alright, I’m sold. 

P: That’s 3/4 of the city population going ‘yeah, we like artistic spaces.’ You’ve only got to look at the Instagram accounts of people going around taking photos of the graffiti wings that are on all these buildings around. People interact with art on a street level. It isn’t something to be helping museums. I’m getting on my soapbox here [laugh].  

M: All right, we are going to move on. Oh, we are over time already. So we’ll get to the last one and then we’re going to have to wrap up. So last one is: 

6. Quality of service. 

Okay, So it’s making genuinely citizen centred services easier and accessible. And this one is so important. If you’ve ever been to the DMV in the States or if you’ve ever tried to complete a simple tax return in America, you will know the pain that comes with poorly designed, customer centric or non-customer centric services. And we like to complain here in Australia. But our government has digitised most services, and it does lead to a far easier way of doing those day to day things like renewing your licence or paying your fines.  

P: Okay. I’ll concede to you, they’re on their way Marie.  

M: And not that I’m paying fines on a day to day basis. But what I will also say that is in here is accessibility. And when I had my accident after I got out of hospitals in a wheelchair for 6 to 9 months while I was getting on to my feet consistently and it’s lonely, it really is lonely. And it’s not lonely because I had less friends. It’s lonely because I couldn’t do many of the activities that they were doing. I couldn’t get to a bar and feel safe doing that. I couldn’t get to public transport. It just isolates you. And there are so many people in our community who have disabilities or who are elderly and aren’t stable on their feet and they’re ah… 

P: They don’t do things because they’re too scared.  

M: Exactly, exactly. And that’s what I mean by accessibility. So having accessible public transport in accessible spaces is so critical to a large portion of our population.  

P: It’s interesting the Australian environmental Grant Makers Network chimes in here, saying that Australian cities are failing with social inequalities.  

M: Yep. 

P: Do you agree? 

M: Look, I think we’re better than a lot of other countries. I wouldn’t say, I don’t think we’re there yet. Still a long way to go. But we’re doing a lot better than a lot of other countries.  

P: So if we’re going to wrap this up because we’ve gone over time as we always tend to do, this was such a big topic to try and condense into 20 minutes. I mean, we could go on and on.  

M: Maybe, all right. Well, on that note. Thank you for joining us today If you want to hear more please remember to subscribe and like this podcast. 

P: Stay happy people. 

[Happy exit Music] 

Related content: Listen to our Podcast: Enabling Happy Cities (E20)

Please note that I get a small commission if you buy something from my site. Your support helps to keep this site going, at no additional cost to you. Thanks!

Finding Purpose with the Japanese Secret of Ikigai (E18)

by

Happiness for Cynics podcast

Have you ever wondered if there was more to life? Are you looking for more passion and purpose? Look no further than the Japanese secret to a long and happy life: Ikigai.

Ikigai comes from the people in the small Japanese community of Okinawa, a remote island with a remarkably high number of centenarians (people over 100 years old). IIkigai has also been proven to be a major factor not only in their longevity but also their happiness.

https://pod.co/happiness-for-cynics/discover-your-passion-with-the-japanese-secret-of-ikigai

Episode notes

In this episode we spoke about how many low income earners might not have much choice in the jobs they perform – Marie pulled a number out of thin air to make a point (30%). To ensure we don’t get angry emails, and to set the record straight, this ABC news article from last year can give you’re the real stats. In short, the average Aussie (median income) is $48,360 before tax, according to a report released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and many people below the median struggle to pay bills and meet healthcare needs.

Transcript

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

P: Hi there. I’m Peter Furness, and I’m a bicycle meander, baking indulgent and non-morning exerciser. Each week we bring you the latest news and research in the field of positive psychology, otherwise known as Happiness.

M: You can find our podcast at MarieSkelton.com, which is a site about major life changes and how to cope with them. The site uses a lot of the research that we talk about here on the podcast and has some really practical tips for bringing happiness and joy into your life.

P: So on to today’s episode, which is all about finding your passion and purpose.

[Happy intro music]

M: So welcome to today’s episode, which is about finding your passion and purpose.

P: Everybody’s gotta have a purpose. There is a song to go with that Marie, ‘Avenue Q’ people look it up.

M: So today we’re talking about having something to do in life, and the reason this is so important is that people who are happy and fulfilled live longer and people who have purpose in their life are more happy and more fulfilled. So you live a better life and the longer life.

P: Absolutely.

M: So, the opposite is also true for people without purpose in their life. And when we say purpose, really, lot of the time for most people, it’s their job.

P: Much of our purpose is lined up in our identity of what our occupation is. Definitely.

M: Absolutely. And that doesn’t mean that it has to be your job, and it only has to be your job. And jobs are taking on a lot different looks and feels nowadays. Definitely a lot more people working from home and the gig economy and services that you can provide online are changing the way that people work, definitely. But for a lot of us, when we talk about purpose, it’s what gets you out of bed in the morning and what you do with the bulk of your hours during the day.

P: But I think some people fall into the trap of not taking charge of that.

M: Absolutely.

P: They’re being led down a path that they think is this’s what I do. But when they actually do the work on themselves, it’s actually know what they want to be doing. That’s possibly what we’re going to talk a little bit more of today.

M: Definitely. And I think this concept of what you want to be doing is pretty new. To be quite frank.

P: Really?

M: Yeah. I don’t think our parents had as much luxury of choice.

P: Yeah, fair enough. They didn’t. They did the solid job. Get a good job. Stick at it. Don’t change jobs. You stay in the same job for 40 years, you stayed with the same company or that sort of stuff. You’re definitely right there. We jump around a lot more and we’re actually encouraged to. I remember sort of hearing from different people saying, I’ve got to move it’s been three years. I’m like ‘Oh, really? Three years and one company. Wow.’

M: Yeah, definitely.

P: You know everybody and the tea lady.

M: I’m one of those. I’m bored now.

[Laughter]

P: Well, that’s the other thing. If, if you’re not having a purpose or you haven’t done the work on finding your purpose, you may find yourself saying, oh I’m really bored with life. Why am I bored with life? This could be a good episode for you people out there that are feeling a little bit stale or a little bit stagnant and wondering ‘Is there a bigger picture?’

M: Yep, definitely. So we’ll look into that in a second. But firstly, I want to, of course [be]cause it’s me, throw some stats in there.

[Laughter] It’s all about the research.

M: Absolutely. But discuss what happens when you have no purpose, and that is such a bad place to be in when you look at the stats. So again, here we go with stats.

So in the US [United States]. Gallup[i] found that the longer you experienced unemployment, the more likely you are to report symptoms of psychological unease, so that can include things like anxiety and depression. Also, they found that one in five people without a job for a year or more report that they have been or are currently undergoing treatment for depression. So one in five people and the rate is about double the rate of depression of those who’ve been without a job for fewer than five weeks. So what that means is, if you’ve got a job, you’re less likely to have depression. If you don’t have a job, you’re more likely to get depressed. And the longer you go without a job, the more your chances of being depressed increases and another way of looking at a major life moment where your purpose might change is retirement.

P: Hhmm. [Sound of agreement]

M: And there’s a study by the London based Institute of Economic Affairs that looked at the likelihood that someone would suffer from clinical depression. And it actually goes up by about 40% after retiring.

P: Very surprising that figure and yet when you think it. I remember when my parents retired, they both retired at the same time and we were all focused on Mum. But what we didn’t realise was it was actually Dad that we had to worry about because Mum made the transition really well. I think because we pushed her to get a hobby. It was like, ‘You’re not going to sit at home and do nothing, so let’s find you something.’ And we forgot about poor old Dad, and it was Dad who actually suffered. He started painting everything yellow.

M: [Laugh]

P: He had some yellow paint, and so everything in the house got painted yellow, the barbecue, the stakes in the garden, the fence.

M: Oh dear..

P: [Laugh], poor Dad.

M: I think that is also a little bit just the way that we’ve expected men to suck it up and move on, and there’s so many great movements out there now about men’s mental health.

P: Mmm, oh definitely. And it’s been, it’s the planning and it’s having the foresight and the forethought to go right ‘I’m retiring in five years. What can I do?’ What can I be a part of? That’s where volunteering comes into it. Our extracurricular activities and if you’ve spent the time during your working life developing strong social connections in those extracurricular activities, albeit sport, church, community groups, all that sort of stuff. That and I think the science would probably back me on this is that that’s going to set you up well for retirement because everything doesn’t stop. I feel sorry for the blokes, particularly in rural areas where men get up and go to work. That’s what they do and then all of a sudden, when they’ve stopped working, there’s nothing to get up for.

M: Absolutely. I’ve been interviewing quite a few people for my book on this topic. So yes, the science does back you up on this.

P: Yay!  I was going out on a limb, quoting without looking at research. There we go!

M: Yeah, absolutely. And look that 40% who struggle after retirement. There’s a whole body of research on that, and one of the big things is purpose. And the other big thing that you mentioned, there was those social connections, so important for your retirement years.

P: Which is a nice segway into what we’re going to talk about today-

M: Actually, it is.

P: – Which is the Japanese concept of Ikigai. What is Ikigai, I hear you ask?

I love this explanation we came up with when we were talking about it. It’s a bunch of circles.

[Laughter]

P: It’s bubbles people. It’s all about bubbles. Bubbles, so in English a rough translation for Ikigai is a reason for being and it finds its origins in a little village in Okinawa, which is little island in Japan that has a high, really high number of centenarians, which is people over 100 years of age. We call it a blue zone, the amount of people who are centenarians and have quite a number of them in one location it’s called a Blue Zone and while their age may have been attributed to diet and lifestyle, there is the practise of Ikigai, which has been noted as a major factor not only in their longevity but in their happiness. So we can talk about Ikigai being, it’s a tool. It’s a way of doing some work. It’s a series of questions that you can ask yourself that look at the four major components of… and I’ll go through these if I can.

  • What you love;
  • What you’re good at;
  • What you can get paid for; and
  • What the world needs.

So we’re looking at passion, your mission, your profession and your vocation and that lovely little sweet spot where all those four elements tie in is what your Ikigai is. The reason you get up in the morning, it’s the reason you wake up and go ‘today I’m doing this because this is what I do.’

M: And I, I think that every year 11 student should have to do this exercise.

P: Oh, I agree. Definitely.

M: Right, because I remember filling in a bunch of circles A, B, C or D. Or would you prefer to be a gardener or an astrophysicist?

P: [Laugh]

M: And, and I said Gardner there, because it’s top of mind because Gardner came back as something I should consider as a career choice.

P: Oh, really?

M: Yes, anyway.

P: Surprising considering you can’t keep a herb alive.

M: I can’t, at all. I just have to look at a plant and it dies.

P: [Laugh]

M: Seriously.

P: Your terrariums doing okay.

M: I haven’t killed the plants that live in a desert? Yeah, Thanks.

P: [Laugh]

M: But I love that this considers not only the realities of what you’ll get paid for.

P: Yes.

M: But also what you’re good at and what you love. And I don’t think that enough emphasis is put on finding a way to get paid for what you’re good at and what you love. We, at school are taught more here are the things that you need to learn, and it doesn’t matter if you’re good at them, you’ve got to work harder.

P: Oh, yes. The markers, yeah.

M: And it doesn’t matter if you love them. That just wasn’t a factor at all. But this is about finding what, what sparks you.

P: Yeah.

M: And then how you can make a career out of that. The other thing that I will say though, is so many of us don’t do what we love and what we’re good at or even what the world needs on a daily basis. We do what we can get paid for.

P: Exactly. We put too much emphasis on one element of the off the four. And I think that that’s something that we could all do a little bit. This’s the thing about doing these exercises, it makes you look at the process of what you should be doing in a much more, I’m going to say spherical, and you’re probably going to pull me up on that one Marie, it’s a more rounded perspective of looking at it. It’s not just looking at what can I get the most amount of money for and what is my profession going to be according to how much money I can generate? That’s not the way to make this decision. And that’s what I like about the Japanese principle is it’s a much more rounded, much more spherical perception of coming at what, what choice should I be making?

M: I absolutely agree with you. The other side of what I was saying, though, is that for a lot of us, we don’t have that choice. You have to solely look at what can I get paid for?

P: Okay. Yep, true.

M: So for a large portion of the population, I think that you take what you can get.

P: That’s an interesting one. I guess I wasn’t part of that large portion, and it’s funny, I was watching Gardening Australia recently.

M: As you do Peter [laugh].

P: It’s a Covid[19] thing. It’s gotten me into gardening Australia. I actually love it, but they were interviewing this, this couple that we’re doing a garden and he was a sculptor and she was an artist and forgive me for, for being a little bit coy here, but sculptors and artists and those people, we don’t make choices according to money. We’re like, I’m going to go and be a plant specialist. They take that passion side, and that’s what they run with. They don’t go with what can I generate my income with.

M: And I think that’s such a blessed and privileged position.

P: It is a privilege definitely.

M: Yes, I guess what I’m saying here or what I’m trying to get at is that some of us have a reality. That means they have to work 60 hours in a minimum wage job in order to pay the bills and provide food for the family, right.

P: Yeah, well we all have to pay the bills and so forth.

M: But what I’m trying to say here is that you can do that with passion. So you’ve mentioned it before Pete. And I worked retail through university. You can bring a passion to living to a retail job that really doesn’t excite you. I worked in a muffin shop for the longest time.

P: [Laugh]

M: It was not lighting my fire, let me tell you that. But I had some of the best memories from great customers, good colleagues, lots of laughs. And I just don’t want this to be inaccessible to the, I’m going to pull a number out of whatever, you know, the 30% of Australians who have to take what jobs are available and who don’t have the luxury or the privilege that we have off choosing from a wide range of different career options or vocations.

P: Okay, so if we if we if we look at that 30% and we look at the concept of Ikigai, I actually believe that this process of going through this tool and using this tool is a way to unlock maybe some of the passion and unlock some of those other elements that does help you to bring purpose and fulfilment to a role that you’re really not wanting to do.

M: Absolutely and then the other thing is again. It doesn’t have to be your job. So if you find that your passion is an art and you cannot make a living out of your art.

P: So many of us can’t.

M: Then how do you bring your passion for art into your life in another way?

P: And that’s, that’s the, that’s the key. That’s the golden little .. nugget of jewel right there.

M: Absolutely. Well, good. I think we’re finally getting to the same point here.

P: It just took us a little round about.

M: Ha, Ha, I, I just don’t want to forget that I feel like we’re really quite privileged when it comes down to it to have the choice, and a lot of people don’t. But that doesn’t mean that this isn’t accessible for them as well.

So if we come back to the older generations in Okinawa and the concept of Ikigai, this is baked into the way that this society works. It’s really worth having a look online. If you haven’t looked at this before.

So they, they put the principles into practice. The community is really geared to activities that bring joy, and, like dancing and singing and giving back to the community and doing all these things in social ways as well. Not, not by yourself. And the impacts are huge.

P: Yeah, it’s a supported environment. If you, if you like it, it’s part of the culture.

M: Exactly.

P: It’s part of the infrastructure that’s already there. It’s geared towards this practise and it’s proven, it’s proven to be effective. As we can see, it’s a blue zone.

M: Yep, all right. So do we have any tips?

P: We do [laugh]. I’m going to let you go with those ones Marie, to start off with.

M: All right, I’ll go.

The first step to changing your life… That’s huge!

P: OH, that’s a massive leap into the unknown there.

M: [Laugh]  

P: Just dive right in!

M: First step is to understand yourself better.

P: That’s very Jungian[ii] thing isn’t it?

M: That’s not the cynical Marie that I’m used to being is it?

P: [Laugh] maybe you’ve gone through this process already Marie. You’ve done the work and it’s all about working. This doesn’t happen, magically. And I think that’s one of the points I do want to make. I’m going jump in here Muz. This stuff is hard. It’s hard yakka. You can’t just cruise along and expect it’ll just, to come through. It’s got to come up. You’ve got to actually go and do the work and do the exercise. And this is what this tool is great for its. It’s asking the right questions, so that you do sit down and go right ‘What is my purpose?’

M: Absolutely. So go online. Have a look for Ikigai, it’s I-k-i-g-a-i, and you’ll see the circles that Pete was talking about with the four elements of Ikigai.

And the first step is to write down all the things that you love, that you’re good at, that you can get paid for and that the world needs. And next, once you’ve written down all of those things, you need to set some goals. So once you’ve worked out where the intersection of all those four things lies best, might not be perfect. You might not find one thing that fits right in the intersection of it all-  

P: I think that’s really important to keep in mind it doesn’t have to be perfect. Just go with it. Have a little faith.

M: – but might find something that meets three of those four.

P: Exactly.

M: So once you’ve got that, knowledge without action is useless. So to reach your goals, you need to change your behaviour, which means you need to change your habits. And there’s a great book that is an international bestseller about changing habits, and it’s James Clear’s, ‘Atomic Habits’. So pick up that book, and in that book he talks about how and, and it’s a proverb that’s been around for centuries. You know, ‘the journey of 1000 miles starts with one step.’ And taking one step is so easy to take. That small, tiny habit that you start adds up over a lifetime to be massive.

P: Starts the ripples.

M: So take the time to do the brainstorming and the self-reflection, and then you’ve got to put into action.

P: And this might be, I’ve got a little list here Marie from two people who have written the book on Ikigai basically, they are..

M: Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles.

P: Well done Marie, was a nice pick up there. I just dropped the mike. So these guys are well known Western authors of the Ikigai method and How to Find Your Ikigai, the Japanese practise and these steps all are pretty easy steps to sort of follow to keep you along the lines of maintaining that Ikigai, because Ikigai is not a static concept, it’s, it’s an ever changing concept. Our purpose in life changes from when we’re 17 to when we’re 45. We don’t have the same purpose. So this is not something that you do once, and you just keep following that path blindly. It’s something to revisit every now and then, so that you move along with your life changes and with your systems that are in process and buying a house and having Children. Your, your needs change your, your purpose changes.

So this is something to revisit all the time.

M: All right, so you’ve got 10 steps don’t you Pete?

P: I do, Thanks to Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles, who wrote the book on Ikigai. The 10 steps include:

  1. Staying active, not retiring.
  2. Leave urgency behind and adopt a slower pace of life. Chill out people.
  3. Only eat until you are 80% full. I like that one it’s such a conceptual one.
  4. Surround yourself with good friends. Social connections.
  5. Get in shape through daily gentle exercise. That’s that lovely idea of maintaining gentle exercise and not hitting the intensity all the time, because is a negative influence on our longevity.
  6. Smile and acknowledge the people around you. See the people when they’re in front of you.
  7. Reconnecting with nature. Forest bathing, I keep coming back to it. It’s a real thing, look it up.  
  8. Give thanks to anything that brightens your day and makes you feel alive. This comes back to what we’re talking about, about self-care being church for non-believers. It’s another one of our episodes. M: And Gratefulness. P: Gratefulness definitely.
  9. Live in the moment. Mindfulness. And then the last one.
  10. Follow your Ikigai.

M: All right. I think that’s a good place to stop. Thanks for joining us this week. We’ll see you next week.

P: Stay happy people.

[Happy Exit Music]

Please note that I get a small commission if you buy something from my site. Your support helps to keep this site going, at no additional cost to you. Thanks!

[i] Gallup, Inc. is an American analytics and advisory company based in Washington, D.C. Founded by George Gallup in 1935, the company became known for its public opinion polls conducted worldwide.

[ii] Jungian – In reference to Carl Jung. Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung’s work was influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy, and religious studies.

Self-Care is Church for Non-Believers (E17)

by

Happiness For Cynics podcast

More and more people around the world do not believe in a God, and therefore do not attend church regularly. This is such a shame, as the act of going to church has so many benefits including making your happier. In this episode, we discuss the ways in which you can replace some aspects of church, if you’re a non-believer, so you can bring more happiness into your life.

https://pod.co/happiness-for-cynics/self-care-is-church-for-non-believers

Transcript

M: Hi. I’ve forgotten our intro.

P: [Laugh] we should never have negroni’s before a podcast.

M: We should always have them.

[Laughter]

M: Welcome the happiness for cynics. That is not how this normally goes. I’m Marie Skelton a writer, podcaster supposedly and an expert in resiliency and change.

P: Hi, I’m Peter. I’m the co-host. I’m a herb harvester, a Feng Shui factualiser and I can’t remember the third thing that I am this week.

M: Maybe we shouldn’t do negroni’s before… [laughter].

This week however, we are talking about self-care and how self-care is church for non-believers.

P: I love that quote. That’s a brilliant that’s a Marie-ism, by the way, folks, that’s a complete Marie-ism.

M: I’ll have to turn that into one of those quotes.

P: Yeah do.

M: You know like the image on Facebook.

P: Think about it ‘Self-care is church for non-believers.’

[Happy intro music]

M: Okay, welcome back. That was probably the weirdest intro we’ve ever done. Alright, self-care we’re here to talk about self-care. We were talking the other day about how self-care is really important, and it’s, it’s important to do all the fabulous things that we talked about. But you’ve got to balance that with looking after yourself as well and taking time to relax and recharge and really focus on your inner self as well, so we were keen to do an episode on self-care and then we came across this idea of self-care being church for non-believers.

P: I love this, it’s brilliant. Such a good quote.

M: So reason that we say that, there’s a couple of stats here that I’ll paint the picture with. So we start in the States. There’s a recent study by the Pew Research Centre, which says that the percentage of Americans who believe in God attend religious services and pray daily has declined significantly during the last eight years. And then, if you look at the latest census results on religion from 2016 in Australia, about 30% of Australians selected no religion, and that’s more than 7% higher than the previous census, where they measured religion in 2011.

So one in three-ish Australians no longer believe in religion and ergo we will assume they don’t go to church.

P: True, I’ll give you that.

M: Making a leap there, but we’re going to make that assumption. And again, I’m not religious and you know each to their own is my philosophy on that. However, one in three Australians are losing the benefits off attending church and that’s just such a shame. So whether you believe in God or not, the benefits of going to church include learning things like kindness, gratitude, service to others, mindfulness having social interaction on a regular basis, meditation, awe and forgiveness.

And we’re going to go into a few of those right now because they all make the wonderful bucket of self-care. But they’re also critical for happiness.

P: I’m sorry. I’m just thinking of Kentucky Fried Chicken now you said, Bucket.

[Laughter]

P: It’s like a little bucket that you can choose from.

M: Exactly, there’s wings, there’s drumsticks.

[Laughter]

M: So let’s start with your, your church bucket here.

P: [Laugh] Do I have to wear my Sunday best? Do I have to dress up?

M: No, this is all about you-

P: – Oh, but I want to wear my hat with the fascinator.

M: You don’t have to but you can.

P: Well, this is the interesting thing is that I think that before we get into everything I’m going to segway here Marie. The fact of going to church, it was a huge social construct, traditionally in, especially in Australian lifestyles. But in Western lifestyles in general, actually, no, that’s not even true.

M: In the states you get dressed up there too. For those of you who think what enough does this Aussie girl know about the states? I did live there for eight years, some I’m kind of semi sort of calling myself a little bit American and I married an American.

P: You’re married by passport.

M: [Laugh] Exactly.

But oh, in the South.

P: Oh yeah, that’s the image I’ve got.

M: They get dressed up for church.

P: Definitely. It’s the social construct. So, the fact of actually going to church of actually taking the time in your weekly schedule to allocate one hour to go to a location, to go to a ceremony to get dressed up to invest in an action that is community driven. It’s something that set a precedent for interaction on people on so many different levels. And that’s what we’re going to talk about with when we talk about the sections that we’ve nominated.

M: What I love about the social interaction piece there Pete, we’re starting with that one, is the church construct encourages people to think about others and you welcome new people into the community. It’s just like, so we met through volleyball, and there is a tribe aspect to that as well. Definitely just like with church, where you look, well you should there’s always the misfits, but you should look after the new people that come into the club or the church or the environment that you’ve got there and you look out for them and you look out for each other. And for people who have never been to church or who haven’t maybe had that team aspect in their life that we have, I think it’s, it’s scary to me that they may never have experienced that community welcoming them in. I think everybody can experience this. It’s like starting in your job, the first time you walk into a new office you don’t know anyone. Everyone has their mates that they say good morning to, everyone hangs out in coffee shop. You’re the, you’re the newbie. You’re the brassy eyed, bushy tailed woman with your negligee scarf. It’s Jane Fonda in 9 to 5.

M: Here’s the thing though. The expectations on a workplace is very different from those at church or in a team sport.

P: OK, fair point. I’ll give you that.

M: You don’t have to, give two hoots about the person you work with.

P: All right, fair yes.

M: You don’t have to be nice to them if the boss isn’t looking, right?

P: Yeah

M: And so there’s a very different social element, and that’s why when we’re saying self-care is church for non-believers, finding your tribe, and there’s a lot of talk out there about finding the tribe and its people who will look out for you and go above and beyond for you. There’s a lot of lonely people out there who don’t have a tribe.

P: Exactly

M: And church would always take everyone in. Yet regardless of your personality, differences, preferences, all of that. Sports, there’s a little bit more argy bargy there, but –

P: – Especially if you play with Brazilians.

[Laughter]

M: – but you’ve got to bring everyone in to achieve a goal, right? And in theory you have to do that in workplaces. But in practise, I don’t think that drive to be accepting and welcoming to everyone is there.

P: Which I think brings up a point that’s really valid is that you’re putting yourself in the space by going to something like church. It’s, you’re expected to be friendly. You’re expected to welcome new people in. So there is that expectation of like ‘you will be nice, eh?’

M: So that social interaction. So I think, for people who are not going to church anymore they’re perhaps missing that tribe. And there’s a few definite opportunities for people to find that in other areas of their lives. But perhaps not as easy as just rocking up to church.

P: Oh, I agree. Definitely.

M: Whatcha got next?

P: Oh, kindness.

M: Yes, be kind. So the whole process of going to church, you’re putting yourself in a place where it is expected of you to contemplate kindness. Contemplate being good to your neighbour. Being nice to your fellow man. All those kind of community constructs that are really based on every society. I’m not just talking about –

M: Do unto others

P: – Western society.

M: I know that one, do unto others!

P: [Laugh] Go Muz, quoting the… what is it 15 commandments.

M: 10

P: It was 15 first, Moses threw a tablet.

M: We should not –

P: – Moses had a hissy fit and he threw a tablet [laugh].

M: Again, I apologise

P: He so did it was Charlton Heston.

M: Alright, maybe we shouldn’t use popular culture as a reference for peoples religions.

P: That’s fair, I get it.

M: Because this matters to [some] people.

P: But my point is you’re putting yourself in the kindness space and you’re expected to be [a] kinder [person] tapping into that. It’s like, OK, I’ve got to be nice to this person and it’s the fake it till you make it concept by putting yourself into a process where you’re forcing yourself to be kind. Maybe you actually might get a bit of beneficial kick-off from that being kind not only to others, but to yourself.

M: Absolutely so as we’ve mentioned in previous episodes the research on kindness is kind of one of the most selfish things you can do. I think we’ve said before another Marieism. The benefits from oxytocin I think and again we keep talking about all the fabulous chemicals in our brain, but the benefits that you get from being kind others are huge. So much so that being kind to others can be seen as a selfish act. And one of the major tenets of nearly all religions is ‘do unto others.’

P: That’s right.

M: So if that is not being reinforced through Sunday school and through your life once a week –

P: Yep, it’s a little reminder when the pastor or the person is standing up on that pulpit saying, “who have you loved of your fellow man this week?” And it’s like forcing you to go ‘right, I have to do this’ and that’s a weekly reinforcement.

M: I think it is that real weekly reinforcement. So whether you’re helping out with tea after the service.

P: Oh yeah, they always had good bickies at the Salvation Army.

M: Or whether you’re participating in a more formalised church program that helps the elderly mow their lawns, what whatever it is that your church environment does not having that in your week because you’re not religious, is a real loss.

P: Definitely, which is a nice segway into, into-  

M: – gratitude.

P: There we go.

M: [Laugh] I read your mind.

[Laughter]

M: And we’ve talked about gratitude, I think it was our third or fourth episode in season one, but again, being grateful for what you have and prayer is one of those things where you thank the Lord for the blessings that you have. And again, if you’re not going to church on a regular basis, the need for being grateful is not being reinforced in your day to day life.

P: Yes.

M: And again I would argue that in the absence of church, what are you doing in your weekly lives to remember to be grateful?

P: Yeah. If you’re not being like the self-help gurus and certain people like yogis who practice every day sitting there, looking at your mantras and looking at your chants and saying these things to yourself as a matter of wrote that’s a daily reminder as much as what church is if you’re not involved in those daily acts, even the act of saying a prayer before dinner that was a big social construct is that there was always the expected thing, and –

M: Two, Four, Six, Eight

[Laughter]

M: Dig in, don’t wait!

P: [Laugh] you could take that one. Yes, well, if we take it in the in the literal sense, you’re being thankful for the fact that you have food on your plate.

M: Which and I’m sure if any of us Journal on gratefulness. Having food is such a First World right.

P: Exactly.

M: It’s not a privilege anymore. I bet you, you pick up anyone’s gratitude journal in the First World and they’re not thanking people for the food on their table.

P: Okay. What’s next?

M: Service to others.

P: Aahh, being generous to others, it’s such a fulfilling action. There’s a lot of research out there that the supports the fact that if you are actually giving away 10% of your time 10% of your income, 10% of your energy in the service of others, you gain back tenfold what you’re giving out.

M: Absolutely.

P: It’s a no brainer, by giving out your generosity and actually offering up something that you have, it invites so much goodwill back into yourself. And again, it’s that selfish act, not a self-less act. It’s reinvigorating your own self esteem. It’s making you feel good. Who doesn’t feel nice when you give a dollar to the person who’s on the street corner begging for money? You think I’ve done my good deed for the day that reverberates through your day hugely. And if something’s – I’ve gotta stop clicking sorry – [Laughter], if when you’re having a bad afternoon, sometimes it’s enough to go you know what my karma jar is full because I gave that dollar to the homeless person this morning.

M: I think there’s also an even greater benefit. So, I’ve done a lot of coaching and a lot of the time for free.

P: Right.

M: Sadly, I’m not making money off my volleyball coaching, but there’s, there’s a sense of the inner satisfaction, and I don’t even know how to describe it. When you have those moments through a season, when a player executes a skill that you’ve been working with them on or they finally get it, and a lot of the time they’ll perform the skill and the first person they lock eyes with is you. You know?

P: Absolutely.

M: Right? Those moments where you’ve spent hours trying to help someone else to be better and they are executing what you’ve been working on together. They’re so valuable, so, so valuable, and you remember those, I remember those moments with those players years later. I don’t remember the projects I’ve worked on in corporate life or a lot of other things. But helping others to grow is such a positive thing.

P: Tim Minchin talks about it in his address to the Melbourne University [and others] a couple of years ago when he gave his ‘Nine Lessons of Life.’ If you haven’t watched it, watch it, it’s fabulous. Tim Minchin says “Be a teacher. Share your love, Share your passion. Share what you know because it will come back upon you.”

M: Yep.

P: And it’s so true.

M: Absolutely. All right, so I’m going to bucket two other benefits of church together here and they’re definitely more your areas of expertise than mine.

P: Yeah.

M: So mindfulness and meditation.

P: Oh dear meditation.

M: I’m bundling them together because we are running a little short on time now, But really, I think we should bump out to 30 minutes because every episode we say we’re running short on time don’t we.

[Laughter]

P: Maybe our listeners should vote on that on the poll.

M: We’re trying to keep it 20 [minutes] so it’s short, sharp commute time. But anyway. So there is definite research about attending spiritual retreats in particular if you’re talking about mindfulness and the greater psychological well-being that you get and feel good hormones in the brain from mindfulness in particular, and then meditation, you’re into meditation.

P: I’m a big time meditator. And I’m a big supporter of it because it is, there are so many benefits that lead to some of the other things that we’ve already talked about today. Kindness and gratitude. When you meditate, you calm your mind down. And it’s not about eliminating thoughts. It’s about recognising thoughts and giving weight to them. It’s such a brilliant way of accessing parts of our physiology and our mental capacity that has huge benefits.

M: Actually, the title of this is self-care. And if you can’t take in the negative and let it go, then you’re not looking after your mental health.

P: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, and actually, I’m gonna skip, we’ll end on your last one here. But skip to forgiveness, which is another teaching in many religions around the world forgiving others.

P: Yeah

M: And again this is, this is a way of letting go of that negativity. And there is yet again a lot of research about the positive benefits of letting this stuff go, allowing yourself to move on and not holding yourself back because of what others have done to you.

P: Being kind to yourself is part of self-care. Very, very important factor. Don’t be too hard on yourself people. Everyone is human, everyone makes mistakes, and it’s OK to make a mistake, as long as you learn from it.

M:  And it’s okay to have negative emotions too.

P: Absolutely. They serve you well. They’re a great lever.

M: And I think right now we’re all experiencing the full pendulum swing of emotions being in isolation and dealing with Covid and the increased anxiety we need to be okay with that. I think we’re learning some really good self-reflection and growth lessons from an emotional perspective because of Covid.

P: I think the awareness has brought it definitely back onto the floor where we’re now concerned with our community connections. We now are concerned with how our daily actions affect not only ourselves but others.

All right, we’re going to move onto the last one, awe. We’ve talked about this before awe inspiring stuff.

M: Awe, A W E, it’s very easy to be like or what? Or what?

P: [Laugh]. I’m going to tell a personal story here. So going through Italy with my niece a couple years ago in Europe, we went to Florence. We’ve done gone for a walk down to the Duomo the cathedral in Florence, and we stood there in the evening light and I’ve got to say it was a pretty amazing aspect. I didn’t know anything about this cathedral I didn’t know about the Medici’s at that time. But I’m standing there in front of this cathedral and it looked like something made out of cardboard, But it was so incredible and the way the light hit it, I was having a moment. Uncle Peter may have got emotional and had a tear in his eye and my niece turns around to me and says “You ‘right.” “It’s okay darling Uncle Peter’s having about a moment”, and she said “Okay, I’m going for ice cream.”  [Laugh]

M: I, especially coming from Australia, I could not agree with you more going through Europe I, I guess there’s a point where there’s only so many churches you can see but when they’re all 15th, 16th century churches and I can only think of Notre Dame and it still breaks my heart that it burnt down but thankfully we got to see it. But there is this understanding in a lot of religion that the place you go to worship should inspire awe.

P: Which brings us back to the point. Churches were built to inspire people they were a connection with the higher power. There were a connection with God. They were meant to lift you up.

M: So as far as awe goes, you don’t have to find it in buildings only as we’ve discussed in the past, we can find it in nature very often. It’s about putting yourself in those moments where you’re standing in front of the Grand Canyon or beautiful mountains, and you take the moment to be mindful and experience your place in the vastness around you. So we are needing to wrap up now Pete.

P: Oh dear. We’ve gone overtime again.

M: But I guess the last thing I just want to say to people is if you are not religious. How are you bringing these items into your life on a weekly basis? How are you replacing what church used to bring to people which was happiness. These elements that we’ve talked about kindness, gratitude, service to others, mindfulness, social interaction, meditation, awe and forgiveness, all of them were being reinforced in people’s lives, and they’ve all been scientifically proven in multiple surveys and research to bring happiness. So that’s my challenge. Find your church, find your church, find your tribe and find ways to make these habits.

P: And really invest in them. So, so make sure that you clock them, write them out and say, like, to a daily check and see if you can tick all eight of those boxes. Eight? Seven? [Laugh]

M: That many boxes, tick all of those boxes! [Laugh]

P: And that’s the benefit and whether you believe or not in religion, church served that purpose. So we need to find a way to invest in that. And it can be as simple as spending 15 minutes at home being mindful or meditating all those sorts of actions. Church doesn’t need to be a building. You’re absolutely right. It can be your backyard as long as you invest –

M: -Or your mind.

P: Exactly. You can invest in that but being mindful and being open to it is really important.

M: I think that’s a great place to end. Thanks Pete.

P: Aww, no worries.

M: See you next week.

P: Stay happy, people.

[Happy Exit Music]

Social Media Detoxing (E15)

by

Happiness for Cynics podcast

We discuss the reasons why you should do a social media detox, offer some tips to get you started and discuss the benefits of cutting social media out of your life (well, sometimes).

https://pod.co/happiness-for-cynics/e15-social-media-detoxing

Transcript

M: Hi world. You’re listening to the podcast. Happiness for cynics. I’m Marie Skelton, a change and resiliency expert, and my co-host is Pete.

P: Hi there. I’m Peter Furness. I’m an isolation domestic goddess, a manager of mischief, and distraction project manager. Each week we’re bringing you the latest news and research in the world of positive psychology, otherwise known as happiness.

You can find our podcast and a bunch of resources and articles on change, resiliency, happiness and living your best life all at marieskelton.com.

So for today’s episode we’re talking about social media and particularly, in particular, how to do a social media detox.

So time for the happy music.

[Happy intro music]

M: All right, so welcome to today’s show. Today we’re talking about social media detoxes Pete.

P: Hmm… the detox, a word that I never use and I am very against.

M: Hehe as a principle, so am I.

[Laughter]

P: [Whispers] They don’t work.

[More laughter]

P: In social media maybe they do, we are yet to see.

M: Hmm and I think the irony here is that you’ve kind of done a social media detox at some point in your life haven’t you?

P: I was looking at some of this stuff. Yes, definitely have definitely gone the ah ‘I refuse to be dictated to’, She Ra, Princess of Power says no.

[Laughter]

P: So, I think the reason this is, is so relevant right now, again social isolation is changing our behaviours and our emotions and our lives. It’s changing everything. Covert 19 has had such a big impact on us and one of the things that it has impacted is the amount of social media and media that people are consuming on a day to day basis. So they’re definitely pockets of people who are doing more with their lives. They’re working. Maybe they’re working harder. Particularly the wonderful, wonderful people in the healthcare industry, bless their cotton socks for everything that they’re doing.

Thank you. So there are a lot of people who don’t have more time on their hands. But on the flip side, there are so many people who do have more time on their hands. I’m actually seeing a lot of that in my workplace. I’m getting very polarised experiences of the covert response from movement, to screen time, to balance of life to cooking. There are people who would do really well with this. But there are some people who aren’t. There are certain aspects that some people are going ‘Oh wow, I get time to look after my meal plan a lot more, I can cook at home, I could be eating better. I’m not grabbing whatever crap is [available] as I run out the door to beat the nine AM train rush.’ So it’s a very polar experience for some people.

M: Absolutely, so this won’t relate to everyone. But we’re here to talk about the impacts of social media and over use of social media.

P: What is overuse Marie? What defines over use of social media?

M: So I think it comes down to whether or not it has a negative impact on your life, so I’ll pawn some stats here from Australia.

So there’s 18 million active social media users in Australia, so that 69% of the population and that’s a stat[itistic] from 2019.

Facebook’s the most popular social media platform, with about 16 million monthly users on the website.

So in and of itself, social media isn’t a bad thing, and social media use can actually be a really positive thing. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with spending time on social media. The thing to be aware of is how it makes you feel, and also there’s a distinction that will get to in a little bit about using it with purpose and intention versus mindlessly using it.

P: I like it. I like that angle of mindlessly because I think too often people reach for the phone, they’re, they’re, scrolling without realising that they’re scrolling. And I think that’s, that’s a real sign that there might be a little bit too much obsession on there. And I’ve had a bit of experience with that myself actually.

M: I wouldn’t even necessarily call it obsession, Pete. Sometimes it’s just laziness. It’s just not being aware to be mindful. And I do it when you’re waiting for the bus or you’re waiting for your coffee to come. You just look at your phone, like that’s just the way that people work nowadays, right?

P: I’ve done a bit of reading around this and come across that it’s the habit, it’s the habit of picking up the phone and one of the things that we, I guess you use the word mindfulness and I’ll go with you on that one. It’s a, It’s a habitual physical action. We pick up the phone. The first thing you do mean a lot of people wake up is to reach for their phone. Is that something that we just need to change and will that then influence the way that we interact with our phones and with social media? Are we just mindlessly going there because there is nothing else to distract us and in doing that, are we being dictated to by the social media platforms?

M: I think the answer is yes, but I don’t think that it’s because there’s nothing else to distract us. I think as human beings, do you remember being a kid and being bored? ‘I’m bored’, right? And mom would be like, ‘go play outside’ like that was the solution when we were kids. Now it’s ‘ugh stop annoying me, go get the iPad or turn on the TV or go to your computer’ or whatever tool it is to fill that time. So we’re training our kids in a way to never be bored, and I’ve mentioned this Ted talk before, but there’s a great Ted talk about the power of being bored and how, when we’re bored, our brain actually has the time to make random connections, which is why all of the great ideas come when you’re washing your hair in the shower or doing the dishes, or you know, those moments where you’re not using your brain for anything like scrolling social media, watching TV, having a conversation, etcetera. So your mind is on autopilot and it has a chance to rest and relax and make those connections. And so having a phone constantly around and picking it up to fill in those moments of boredom has become a habit. You’re right, but it’s also depriving our brain from some really valuable moments that we should be actually trying to encourage a bit more of.

P: Definitely. I think it comes down to a personal awareness initially, even when you were talking about kids and so forth. But I remember making the choice myself to actually stop looking at my phone on the bus and to actually go across the bridge and look out at the sun shining on the harbour, which is a pretty bloody beautiful sight and to actually train myself to not be constantly looking at a screen for the entire bus trip. Okay, I’ll check my phone before I get on, but then when I’m sitting down, I’m actually gonna put my phone in my bag. I’m going to look out at the world. I’m going to see what the morning is doing. I’m going to notice the people who are sitting with me on the bus or who are riding next to me on the bicycle, passing on the street, making that choice to be engaged with what is around.

M: Ah nice.

P: In England I was doing that and everyone was watching a parade. I think it was the Olympics and there’s this wonderful photo of all these people with their phone, capturing the moment on the phone. And then there’s this old lady with her arms crossed, just hanging out and smiling and going ‘Yeah, I’m just watching.’ I want to be that person. I want be the one person who doesn’t have the technology and who is just experiencing, being present, being mindful.

M: I think that’s a really good point, because if you have ever filmed an event that you were so excited to be at and turn around later and gone ‘I really just didn’t enjoy it because I was so focused on making sure I captured it.’

P: I’ve never done it, but I’ve been very conscious of it, and I, when I go to live events, theatres. Yeah, I don’t film. I try not to. I might capture a single moment, especially if it’s a big concert or something.

M: I’m calling you, I know you have. When we went to see Elton John you did it! I saw you.

P: I waited until you and Jeffrey both pulled your phones out.

[Laughter]

P: I had permission, he he. There was a purpose in that one, that was to share with my sister. This is a point. So this comes back to how to use social media. So the information that I’ve gained is that there is a positive way to do this. There is a positive, and those few that are actually contributing to their Facebook feeds and sharing information have a better relationship with social media than those who are unnecessarily using it as a comparative method of comparing their post.

M: Yeah, and I think a lot of the research for a number of years has shown that FOMO is real and, unfortunately –  

P: – FOMO?

M: Fear of missing out. Unfortunately, the view that you get from other people social feeds is that their lives are full of amazing meals with fun and friends and great activities, because you’re only seeing the best moments of someone’s life.

P: Yeah.

M: Yeah, it can be really tough to see everyone living there best lives on social media, and you don’t realise that there’s a lot of time in between those moments for people where things might not be good, so it is really important to share your moments with friends on social media but to also have that understanding that you’re only seeing highlights of people’s lives and you need to engage with people off social media to bring that balance, and that balanced view.

P: It’s the sharing that I’m interested in. That, that prospect of actually going on and sharing. Now I took my Facebook feed off about three years ago. I stopped posting and I stopped advertising events and so forth. That was a conscious decision. Every now and then I’m tempted to go back on and pop something up there when something really lovely happens, but I’ve stayed off it.

Social media for me was a negative experience because I think I fell into that group of being constantly up comparing my life to other peoples. So people were always going away on holidays. They were having an easy time with their friends on boats and things like that. I’m like oh, I don’t do any of that, which is absolute bollocks, because I do. But my consciousness was I’m not involved in that at this present moment and big celebrations when there have been social events on and I choose not to be a part of that. For example, Mardigras. I chose not to go to Mardigras one year and everyone was having a fantastic time and I got FOMO. It was that thing of ‘I’m going to turn this off because it’s just making me feel like I’m not good enough for my, I’m not involved so therefore, I don’t feel good about it and I think that’s a dangerous spot to be in. Whereas if I was involved in posting and actually putting up fabulous times like when I was on a boat a couple of months ago for my besties 40th birthday and we were jumping off the boat in Shark Bay [Laughter] you know it’s, that’s a positive spin because it is connecting with people and it’s allowing you to share those experiences. When I was reading an article by Catherine Price, author of How to Break up with your Phone and she did talk about how social media makes you feel when you do share stuff and that it is positive because sometimes you’re keeping a relationship going that may have fallen by the wayside because matters like geography, time spent, they have children, you don’t, you’re on different time schedules. The social media actually contributes to keeping those relationships going so it is very much how you use the experience.

M: I definitely agree. So, both of us have lived overseas. And for me, it’s how I keep an eye on what’s going on. And you know, we do catch up every now and then, but it’s a good in between.

P: Yeah, so the take up I’m getting from that is passive versus active users.

M: Yes

P: Don’t be a passive user be an active user. Use it to check up on your friends. Use it to find things that you’re interested in. But don’t endlessly scroll at 11 30 at night when you’re in bed alone and feeling down. It’s a no brainer, don’t.

M: That’s a really good point. Before we move on I do just want to say there the studies show that poor social media use and excessive social media use. So when I say poor, it’s that mindless or passive social media use leads to depression, increased anxiety, increased loneliness, sleeplessness and a raft of other mental health issues. So this, this is a thing. It is serious, and social media sites are designed in a way to activate our pleasure centres. This is the thing, if you’ve ever worked with UX and behavioural economists. A lot of large corporations now, know exactly where to place a button to make you more or less likely to click on it. And they’ve actually gotten so good at knowing how people respond to colours, shapes, design, layout, etcetera and driving the behaviour they want that there’s now a whole field of research into the ethics of that, right. So that all that, like it’s crazy how much this stuff is actually a field and exists. So what they do with social media sites is that they design them to keep you here, to keep you coming back. So they’re activating those pleasure centres so they offer positive reinforcement like Pavlov’s dog. Keep giving you treats and those treats are ‘likes’ they’re the ‘thumbs up’ and people come back, right.

P: Yes. The self-esteem behind Social media is its positive affirmation.

M: Absolutely.

P: And that’s what we’re all after, we’re all after those ‘thumbs up’ and ‘likes’, and I remember when I used to post checking in to see who liked my post did the person that I really, really wrote it for over in Kazakhstan or something see it and like it, and you keep checking it.

M: Yep

[Laughter]

M: And now that we’re putting a lot more ethical and moral pressure on companies like Facebook. We’re seeing changes happen in the industry actually, we’re seeing that you can’t see who’s liked posts necessarily on some platforms, so they are changing slowly to meet the changing consumer expectations. So this is definitely an evolving area. But let’s talk about how people can do social media detox.

M: So firstly it’s, it’s important to ask whether you need to do one. And as we said before, I think it’s about starting with some self-reflection and evaluating your habits. So maybe spend a week just jotting down, you can do it on your phone if you want, just jotting down all the times that you pick up your phone so it starts by being aware. And while you do that, put a rating. So maybe a one to five rating of how you’re feeling when you do it. So is it impacting your mental wellness, your productivity, your creativity? How are you feeling after you’ve been using your phone? And if you come away not having a good feeling from the social media you used or from your amount of social media use? There’s five quick things that you can do. So I’m going to fly through these because I think we’re running low on time here Pete.

So first, find a detox, buddy.

All the research shows that you’re more likely to complete any kind of new habit, so weight loss, new exercise regimes all the rest of it if you’ve got a buddy.

The second thing is get used to the idea of being okay with being bored.

The goal here is to take back your time and mindfulness and that means replacing hours of endless scrolling with more fun but mindful activities. So it means being present and being okay with maybe being bored.  

So number three and this is the big one.

Delete your Social Media Apps.

P: [Deep breath in!]

M: You know, if that makes you feel anxious, remember this is only temporary.

P: I can see people clutching their pearls right now. [Laugh]

M: People are like ‘delete, stupid podcast –

[Laughter]

M: – never coming back to that.’ But if, it’s worth remembering that deleting your apps off your phone is only temporary, you can load them back up again tomorrow. Whenever you need to. So, so before you feel that anxiety, know that it is temporary. And if you really can’t delete them, or can’t bring yourself to delete them, move them into a folder on one of the back screens. If you want to take it one step further during Corona virus, you might also want to limit your news intake to 30 minutes a day.

Finally change your lock screen.

So this simple act will make you think every time you have to answer your phone. So if you change your password you’ve got to stop and think ‘What was the new password?’ And that could be enough to stop you from mindlessly getting on to phone and opening an app.

P: Yes, I’ve got one more to add there Marie, I really like this one. Put a rubber band around your phone.

M: Yeah, I saw that one. Yeah, that’s the same, same premise. The physical barrier.

P: Yeah, you’ve got to take it off before you decide am I going to scroll? Okay, I’m going to take that off it’s going clock into my time, so triggers, triggers a memory in your brain.

M: Yep, yep. So and look, there’s a couple other things here. I’m going to quickly throw them in there if you can go buy yourself an alarm so that you stop using your phone last thing at night, and first thing in the morning. And it’s not the last and first thing you’re picking up and you can leave it in another room.

And then lastly, start a new project the week that you’re starting a social media detox. So book in some time with friends or get started on a course or something? Yeah and that’ll help you to shift your time to something productive.

P: Yeah, Active distraction.

M: So before we go, Pete, you said that you at one point stopped using a social media. You noticed that it was leading to bad mental space. What was the impact after you made this? Did the detox, made the stop?

P: Hit the delete?

M: Yep

P: [Singing] freedom!

[Laughter]

M: There you go. That’s all you needed to say, right?

P: Ha ha, for me it was the way the mindfulness crept back in. I was solely focused on my tasks. I wasn’t very easily distracted, and I found I had more time. I think that’s the biggest takeaway from me from this, from that experience, well it’s something that I’ve continued to do much to my friends disgust when they can’t contact me during the day. Marie Skelton.

[Laughter]

P: I had to put a special ring tone on my phone. So I knew it was you.

M: [Laugh] I don’t see your point. Is that a bad thing?

P: It’s that thing of being really focused on a task. No, I’m in one hour slots during the day and not having that distraction made me really focuse on what I was doing.

M: All right. Well, that’s all we have time for this week. But we will see you again next week. And thank you for joining us.

P: Stay happy folks

[Happy exit music]

Exercise Makes You Happy (E13)

by

Happiness for Cynics podcast – episode 13

In episode 13, Pete and Marie discuss the science behind why exercise makes you happy and some recent studies about the benefits of exercise. They also offer a range of tips to help with motivation and to get some exercise into your life if you’re on lock-down.

Things we Talked About on This Episode

In case you also wanted to mental image of Aerobics Oz Style 🙂

Transcript

M: You’re listening to the podcast Happiness for Cynics. I’m Marie Skelton. I’m a writer and speaker focused on change and resilience. My co-host is Peter.

P: Hi there. I’m Peter I’m an isolated touch person. I’m an organiser of delayed jobs and a watcher of morning television… right now. Each week, we bring you the latest news and research in the world of positive psychology, otherwise known as happiness.

M: And you can send us ideas for people to interview or topics to cover. Or just tell us we’re wrong by going to marieskelton.com/podcast. Also on that…

P: If you’re going to tell Marie she’s wrong, get ready! Get ready for an argument.

M: We welcome being corrected when we’ve made mistakes, Peter! So, so on that site are a whole lot of articles, resources and research and some really practical tips for bringing joy and happiness to your life. So onto today episode, which is all about exercise.

[happy music]

P: I don’t know why, but now I have Aerobics Oz Style running through my head.

M: Haha, Love it.

P: All those women in tight leotards and the strength from the 1980s.

M: We’ll have to put that up on the site so people can look on. And have a laugh actually, which is why we’re here, isn’t it? Alright. So today we’re talking about exercise and its impact on health and happiness. When I say health I mean mental health. There’s a whole lot of research into the physiological and physical health benefits of exercise, but we’re going to focus on how it can make us happier.

P: We all know exercising is great for our mood and everything, but what about our wellbeing in our mental state? According to science, that is, I was actually quite impressed with some of the research that was going on here and some of my ideas that I always held to be true were kind of challenged, which is kind of a nice point about going in and looking at science, because it’s all about the science, isn’t it Marie? We don’t just go believing

M: Of course, and we are here to break down mental barriers and limiting beliefs and all those things that our parents and grandparents instilled in us, and society instilled in us. And there’s one in particular that I’m really excited to talk about today, and it is this assumption that exercise is a burden to bear, and I think unless you were in the 15 or 10% of people who were naturally athletic and were picked on the school teams first and all the rest of it. It really has been a challenge to enjoy exercise for a lot of people. So, I want to go…

P: True I deal with this a lot with my client base.  

M: So I really want to go through a lot of science. I’m excited to talk through that, but also, I really want to challenge us to start thinking about exercise in a very different way. And hopefully the science will help people to reframe it in their minds. So another reason that I’m very excited to be talking about exercise at the moment, apart from being one of those people that has just naturally being a bit of an athlete, in my life, is that it’s so relevant for us being stuck at home at the moment.

There is also a huge danger right now with a lot of people, firstly all of a sudden losing all incidental exercise. So, we’re no longer walking to the bus stop and then walking to the office, and going downstairs for a coffee, and running up the road to pick up some groceries and getting lunch at the cafe, all of that incidental walking and movement is now pretty much gone. I know I walk about six steps to get from my desk to the bathroom and about 10 steps to get to the kitchen nowadays. So just the little movement that all adds up is absent from a lot of people’s days now and then. Secondly, the bigger exercise routines just completely destroyed. Gyms are closed, sports teams aren’t playing at the moment, so I think, focusing on exercises topical at the moment. So, let’s look at the science Pete, I’m going to throw to you. Tell me the science!

P: Oh, wow, look at me getting all scientific! I’m going to start off from the Latin “Mens sana in corpore sano”, a sound mind is a sound body. So, there’s always been the link between mental health and exercise and movement right through the ages. exercise has a link to a mental wellbeing. Primarily through neurotransmitters. The big street dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine. They’re the happy drugs. They’re the things that make us feel joyful. They are present when we exercise, and they increase in their production when we move our bodies and we do exercise. So, the other thing that these neurotransmitters do is that they block pain. The neurotransmitters when they’re present in the synapse, which is the gap between the different nerve endings that forms the connection’s back to the brain. When those three big neurotransmitters are in a lot of amount, in that synapse, it blocks the pain signal from reaching the brain. So, we effectively don’t feel pain…

M: while we’re doing exercise?

P: whilst and for a certain period of time afterwards. Because those neurotransmitters are present in the nerve synapse for a period after we finish exercise as well. So that joy of actually moving in exercising does las after you finished the actual activity, you get that lovely flush of going. I feel great, which usually means that you move a little bit more, which then creates more neurotransmitters, so it’s a self-sustaining cycle.

M: Nice. So, apart from it, making you feel good. It also stops you from feeling bad, which I think is really interesting. There is a study that I did want to talk about on the topic of depression and really interesting, because it came from our very own Black Dog Institute here in Australia when they collaborated with universities and health institutes from the UK, Australia and Norway. They did a study on about 34,000 Norwegian adults who will followed over a period of 11 years.

M: Now, as far as studies go, that is huge, right? 11 years, 34,000 people. And the great news out of that study was that they found that as little as one hour of exercise each week, regardless of intensity, helps to prevent depression. You only need a very little amount of exercise, and it can have really positive benefits. So, not only are you getting all of the wonderful natural chemicals flowing through your body, but also if you’re prone to depression or in situations that might lead you to depression, a little bit of exercise can help you to avoid falling down that path.

P: Well, it’s interesting because I’ve always intrinsically known this. I’ve always known that moving around getting out into the sunshine or doing an activity helps with your feelings of anxiety and stress. It was very interesting for me going into the research of it and seeing exactly why, in the study that Samuel Harvey talks about with the Black Dog Institute is that people who have not exercised at all – so sedentary individuals – if they do that 1 to 2 hours, they have a huge exponential increase in wellbeing. What we know is if you move, if you’re active, it helps.

M: Absolutely. And there’s more intricacies when it comes to intensity, isn’t there Pete?

P: Definitely. And this is something that I want to mention. University of Connecticut talks about the research that they took on with the benefits of moderate exercise versus intensity of exercise. Again, taking athletes as opposed to sedentary people. If you’re a huge exercise, vigorous activity person and you’re going out there and your go-to mechanism of dealing with issues off stress or anxiety is to go and hit it hard in the gym, you may actually be doing yourself a disservice. So, you’ve gotta watch that in terms of what sort of personality that you are. If you’re a person that site on the couch all day, get up and go for a walk. That moderate level of exercise has huge benefits for you. If you’re high level athlete and you want to go out and smash yourself on the track, you’re actually better off taking the pedal off and going for a walk in the forest, because it’s that moderate exercise that has more the benefit for your wellbeing in that activation of those happy neurotransmitters rather than introducing other elements such as cortisol into your system, which only creates more adrenal response, and that can create even more the high levels of anxiety.

M: So I think it is worth pointing out. You mentioned depression and anxiety. But there is a bit of contention about anxiety

P: There is, and there is a lot of talk about whether these findings relate to pre and post depression, as opposed to anxiety and what I have gained from the research is that the anxiety levels are unnecessarily affected by this moderate exercise.

M: Yes, it’s also worth pointing out that it was one of the big things when I was reading through all the research that I was keen to understand. Looking at causation and cause and effect, the studies looked at that cause and effect to make sure that happy people don’t just exercise more rather than exercise being the cause of people becoming happier.

P: Absolutely. Yeah, for those of further, it is actually the Hunt Cohort study of October 2017. Samuel B. Harvey in the American Journal of Psychiatry. One of their conclusions that they give and I’m going to read this out quoted it, is that “Given that the intensity of exercise does not appear to be important, it may be that the most effective public health measures are those that encourage and facilitate increased levels of everyday activities, such as walking or cycling. The results presented in this study provide a strong argument in favour of further exploration of exercise as a strategy for the prevention of depression.”

So again, it’s just reinforcing that gentle exercise, walking, cycling, going forest bathing — which is a thing – these are good things that can really help in terms of accessing that wellbeing aspect, and that feel good experience.

M: Yeah, absolutely. It doesn’t necessarily track with the physical sciences, which say that high intensity is better for you from a cardio point of view. But if we’re talking mental health, then absolutely the science is showing to be pretty clear on this. All right, so, back to what we’re talking about at the beginning here. So exercise, definitely a law research shows that it has positive mental outcomes, and our listeners and ourselves at the moment are all in this high risk situation of not only not doing enough exercise but actually doing far less exercise and potentially not really knowing how to fix that. So I know for me when I am into week four of self-isolating and my first week was a shocker. So, for me, I normally, my routine in the mornings, I sit down and do some writing. Then I get myself ready for work, and I’ve got a good 30-minute walk through the city to get to my office. And then in the evenings, I’ve got volleyball, or I’ve got a regular gym routine as well, and all of that stopped. And so the first week, I got up and did my writing. And then I just switched laptops. I moved my personal laptop over and brought work laptop in front of me on. I worked on. I got up to pee, and I went to the kitchen at lunch. Apart from that, I turned around and I’d done 12 hours of sitting and again it’s at a laptop, not in front of a screen, so my neck and my shoulders were tight and tense, and I did that for five days straight. But I have become far more aware of that really bad behaviour. They say that sitting for prolonged periods of times is as bad as smoking 15 cigarettes. That’s how bad it is for you.

P: I feel like I’m on rote here. Because this is a conversation I have very often with so many of my clients and trying to get some office workers to do the most basic movement patterns outside of sitting at the desk top from getting on the bus and going in the car. It’s like pulling teeth sometimes. So my clients, you know who you are. I’m talking to you. Points coming out… right… Schedule it, make a schedule, make a plan, get in your diary and put down an hour. Put it aside where you’re going to do some movement doesn’t have to be big movement. It doesn’t have to be going to the gym. It could be playing with the dog and the kids, getting on the jungle gym and going for a couple of swings on the trapeze. That’s movement. It’s exercise, so it’s really important to schedule that in and keep to it. Make sure that nothing interrupts that time. If Grandma calls, tell her to hang up and call you back later. That’s your time. It’s your time to move. The other thing is making it accessible. Have it near you? If you’re going to do something, it’s no good if it’s 30 minutes away, because it’s too easy for you to go “Oh, it’s too hard to get there.” Make sure you have it close to you. And if that means it’s close to work or it’s close to home where you spend most of your day, it’s got to be accessible on. That’s a really important tip for making sure that you keep to your schedule. Prepare pack your God damn gym bag. Take it with you. Put a talent, put a put a snack and put a chocolate bar in that you’re going to give to yourself that the end of your 20 minute run. If that’s what you need to motivate yourself. If it’s a cherry ripe, have a few cares as long as you’re preparing yourself because that’s setting up process and it’s setting up routine on you’ll be thinking of that chocolate bar all the way throughout the day gone, I’m going to have a Cherry Ripe at the end of my 20-minute run. It’s going to motivate you

M: I love Cheery Ripes!

P: There you go. You can see that reaction is what we’re after.

M: It’s… by the way, it’s an Australian treat that no one else around the world actually even likes, like musk sticks… very Australian. We grew up on them as kids. And Americans if you feed them musk sticks, they think we’re weird. They taste like chalk to them

P: Bahahaa

M: Complete side bar, by the way. So, let’s get back away from treats and back to exercise.

P: Oh, now I feel like Iced Vovos and a cup of tea. [laughs] Make it social! Which is really hard at the moment because we’re not allowed to make its social, and I think this is one of the big impacts that we’re experiencing.

M: No, I call … not B-S… but I have a solution. I have a colleague of mine who is zooming their exercise, so she does exercise with a group of friends at the gym normally, and now they’re zooming. So they’re doing zoom exercise sessions, and it’s actually making them a bit more connected, and it’s holding them to account to actually do it.

P: That’s my whole point is if you can use what you can to make it social, so even if we’re not in the same location. Setting each other goals is another good one. So I’m going to say to Marie, right, we’re going to 100 push ups. I’m going to post my 100 push ups on Facebook Messenger with you on, that’s going to pressure you to match me for those 100 push ups. So that’s another way of sharing the load or making a social, make it again competition.

M: Peeeete! That was my tip. That’s in my column.

P: Oh, did I steal from you? My bad oh dear.

M: Yeah yeah yeah, like you care.

P; So sad. Hahaha

M: OK OK. What else have you got? Then it’s my turn.

P: No, no, no I’ll throw to you here, Marie, I’ll let you take over from there. I did want to say that you know, self help gurus, motivational coaches all support that when we’re mentally exhausted, were stressed or fatigue, one of the best things that you could do is change your physical state. And if that means getting up, putting on a sarong and a hula hoop and dancing around to Kylie Minogue in your underwear, I say, go for it.

M: Haha, of course, you do. So, moving onto my tips. I did want to mention make it a goal, so it is really hard at times to motivate yourself to get up and do what you know you should do. But if you’ve got a holiday that you want to go on, if you want to go climb the Leaning Tower of Pisa or you will not go hike Machu Picchu, you picture there’s a great types of goals or, you know, why not Everest? You know, shoot for the moon, right? But it takes discipline and dedication to being fit and building your strength and resilience to get to that point. And they’re great goals to have. So they’re even better than just a bit of competitiveness between friends. If that’s what motivates you, that that’s what motivates you. Secondly, I think going back to what was saying at the beginning of the episode, I really would love people to change their mindset about exercise from it being a chore to being a form of self-care a year.

If you take the time to put on makeup before you go to work, or to get your hair coloured and cut, or just cut, or to iron your shirt or have a bath every now and then, or you spoil yourself with a glass of wine, you should be spoiling yourself with exercise. Yeah, and if we can start to shift mindsets, we might start to make a dent in this obesity epidemic that we’re seeing sweep the world as well. The great thing

P: I support your viewpoint, making it, making it fun. Finding something that you enjoy is one of the big things that my clients about it. So, I’m not going to make you run five KMs if you hate running. Let’s find something you enjoy doing. I remember for one of my clients it was salsa dancing. That’s perfect, I said let’s send you to ballroom classes. Let’s find something local that’s got salsa and off she went, and she’s been doing it for a year and loves it right.

M: There is something out there for everyone. And that’s where I think a lot of us, were just burned by PE and by gyms, gyms are not for everyone. If you want to up your incidental exercise, you can try doing with a gardening if you’ve got a backyard, maybe starting your days with a bit of yoga. If you can put YouTube on your phone or on your TV in the morning and do a little bit of stretching and core work. That’s a great way to start your day and something that I’ve been doing it at lunch times is a short, sharp, 20-minute high intensity interval training. So “hiit” work out. So you can get a really good hard work out in before you your lunch. And then the last thing, I want to leave you with is that one of the things to remember is that going for walk counts as exercise. It’s also free doesn’t require special equipment. You can do it with a friend. And also, there’s additional research out there about the positive psychological benefits of being outdoors. So, you can kill three positive psychological birds with one stone. You get the social element, the exercise element and the outdoors element.

So that’s all I wanted to leave you with today. Thank you for joining us, and if you want to hear more, please remember to subscribe and like this podcast, or even better, share it with your friends.

Self-Compassion and Being Kind to Yourself (E12)

by

Happiness for Cynics podcast – episode 12

Self-compassion is about being aware of your self-talk and learning to be kinder to yourself. You may be surprised at the sorts of thing you say to yourself when you’re not paying attention!

Transcript

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

P: Hi there, I’m Peter Furness and I’m a manipulator of sore points, pusher of positivity and ‘movement prescriptor.’ Each week we bring you the latest news and research in the world of positive psychology otherwise known as happiness. Marie has a blog.

M: Sure do, so you can find all of these episodes as well as a lot of other resources and information at @marieskelton.com. So on to today’s episode, which is all about self-compassion.

[Happy music]

M: So today we’re going to talk about the importance of self-compassion. So Pete, can you help our listeners understand what we’re talking about here?

P: Self-compassion is the relationship of the self, let’s turn inward for a moment shall we.

M: This is going to be a fun episode [laugh].

P: It’s about self-talk, it’s about the friendship that you have with yourself. And it’s more than just being positive. It’s about understanding the relationship between negative and positive self-talk, and how we reinforce negative behaviours within ourselves. Being kind to yourself and having the ability to not judge yourself is really a prime issue around self-compassion.

M: Now, I think that from a cynics point of view, this is gonna be gold, [Laugh] because there are a lot of people out there who just want to say to millennials in particular suck it up, buttercup, right and get on with your life. And we never had this self-care, positive movement thing going on.

P: It was something for the hippies in the 60’s.

M: Not even that, they just took drugs and got on with life, right?

[Laughter]

M: So we are smack bang in the middle of what this podcast is all about. It’s breaking down the preconceived ideas about some of these positive psychology ideas. So really keen to understand the research behind this one. Definitely.

P: I think a big thing about it is that it’s not to be dismissive. Self-talk can be damaging. We can’t just dismiss this as little thoughts that we don’t listen to, because that’s really not dealing with the problem. Self-talk is there. It is something to be aware of. Those voices in your head, you should be listening to them and more importantly, we should be understanding why they’re there. Giving them some space and diving into that space and looking at it objectively, not judgmentally.

M: Yeah, and I think it’s also really important to say that we’re talking about people who are still in a healthy frame of mind and ,lot of people who’ve been on the flip side of mental health and who have suffered depression or who have ongoing chronic levels of depression, it can be really harmful to say to say to someone who’s struggling, you know, just think positively.

P: Yeah, just be cheery.

M: So we’re talking about how people who are in a healthy enough state of mind motivate themselves and how they get the best out of themselves in their life. And it’s worth saying that these practises can be helpful for people who perhaps are on the far deeper end of the spectrum. But they’re not, they’re not going to solve deep rooted issues.

P: No, that’s for others.

M: So, looking back in your life, have you had any moments where you had a lot of negative self-talk?

P: [Laughter] where do I begin… OK opening the Pandora’s Box. Self-criticism, it comes from many different places, and I think for myself, bless my lovely Mother. She was the eldest of 12 children in the outback of Australia. So Mom was the home care taker, she was in charge, looking after these kids when they were still having rations from the Second World War. They didn’t have a fridge, all that sort of stuff. So Mums upbringing and her introduction to ‘suck it up buttercup’, that was pretty strong in those days. Now she passed that onto us, me and my sister in different ways, and that’s self-criticism comes out from those childhood experiences sometimes. So what I picked up on that judgmental, suck it up, just get on with it, be tough, kind of mentality and that was really from my mom, bless her. Being aware of that, coming to that in a separate point in my life, I had to reflect on some of that and it’s interesting that that didn’t happen with me until much later it wasn’t until I got out of University that I really started looking at what those thoughts and processes were and how they came up. And being a… involved in a competitive field like dance, I came to dance late. All these kids had done ballet for 20 years before I even did my first class. So there was a lot of ways, one the coping mechanisms of getting through that was to convince myself you’re not good enough. You’ve got to work harder now That works to a certain point because it motivates you, use you a little bit of a kick up the arse and makes you drive hard. When you’re feeling a bit sorry for yourself. It’s like No, suck it up, get in there and keep going. Now that can be really positive but the damaging thing is when you learn those behaviours and you apply it to every situation. And I think that’s where it turns negative.

M: Yep, I think for me I had very similar thoughts going through my head when I went to the A.I.S., which is Australian Institute of Sport for overseas listeners. So I, like you, came to volleyball late, I first touched a volleyball when I was 14 and very quickly went from there to making the school team and making our state team and then being selected for a national junior team and then being offered the chance to train with the senior national team at A.I.S. and I had only been playing for less than a year.

P: wow

M: So coaches obviously saw raw talent and brought me in and the second I got there, I was so out of my league, [Laughter] I was so bad, so rather than a fight to be better mentality. I just constantly felt like I was letting the team down. I just didn’t cope. So I had this huge impostor syndrome and I look back now and I think I had the skill, but with a different mindset I could have taken that as a learning opportunity. I had grace and acceptance from the coaches, not necessarily from my teammates, but definitely I look back at the wasted opportunity that that was for me because of my negative self-talk and the fact that I did everything possible just not to get in everyone’s way and didn’t take that with two hands and run with it. So let’s talk about the research.

P: Of course, It’s all about research on this podcast. Everything has to be backed up scientifically.

M: [Laughter] Also self-compassion, It’s a bit wishy washy. We are talking about things that people just will flat out say they don’t believe in.

P: Absolutely. The word compassion immediately brings to mind images of Monks in robes and the Dalai Lama and all this negative stuff and it’s easy to just go, yeah not for me thanks.

M: Yeah

P: It’s an immediate block and I think that’s the big issue sometimes in turning it on, turning that term self-compassion on yourself. You’ve got to look back on you and be willing to go into that space all right, let’s look at this. Let’s really spend time self-analysing and really go internal for a while and for a lot of people that’s way to confronting.

M: Yeah, but I think the important thing is, do you want to be happy? That’s really what we’re talking about here and for some people who are used to self-analysing and who are very open with sharing their emotions and analysing their blockers and understanding their issues for someone who is completely shut off to that, they can want to be happy but have never have delved into that other side of the emotions.

So this could be a really hard things to, to start to do. But really, it comes down to just being more self-aware.

P: Yes, that’s part of it. Definitely.

M: Yeah, so let’s, let’s have a look at some of the research. Maybe we can sway some of the cynics out there. 

[Laughter]

P: So it’s interesting that you bring up a sports reference Marie because the first piece of research I’ve got is actually from Dr. Christopher M. Carr, “Sport Psychology: Psychologic Issues and Applications (Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation Clinics of North America, 2006). Who’s a psychologist for sports such as the NBA and the NFL in America-

M: – oh, is that all…

[Laughter]

P: He wrote an article in 2006 Psychologic Issues and Applications, and he talks about athletes engaging in negative self-talk. So you see a player who’s frustrated, angry, anxious on court on the field they can’t get it right. They go into that negative space where they’re berating themselves. I’m thinking of tennis players here, like it’s the Nick Curious’s, even the Andre Agassi, when he was in his younger bouffant hair days, he went into those potholes of anger and frustration and yelling and stuff.

M: Mmm Hmm

P: What Carr talks about is that these emotional states that we get into challenge our breathing, they increase our muscular tension and they create a loss of concentration and focus. All of these factors results in a lowering of performance.

M: So I guess what we’re saying here is the emotional impact of that negative self- talk has a physiological impact that for athletes is really critical.

P: Yeah, if you can’t breathe, you can’t perform, you need that.

M: Yep

P: So Carr goes on to talk about the flip side of that talking about an athletes self-talk, being positive and relevant and he says that the resulting emotional experience at this stage is one of relaxation calmness, feeling centred. As a result, this turns good performance into a positive and increases your performing ability.

M: I guess for me, as an athlete, if you’re not feeling confident. How do you pretend to be confident?

P: Fake it ‘til you make it [laugh].

M: Is that what the research is showing here I guess.

P: Exactly, it’s about accessing that mindset, how do I calm myself down, bring myself back to my focus so I can control my breathing and then from there, from there come at the point, the game from a different perspective.

M: I’ll move on to some more research here, and I’m interested in how it applies to a work scenario as well [be]cause not all of us are athletes. There’s a book called ‘How We Work’, written by researcher and author Leah Weiss, and she talks about how again negative self-talk doesn’t help us and can actually make things worse. The research shows that self-criticism is linked to depression, loss of self-esteem, negative perfectionism, procrastination and rumination. And some might say that it helps them to be better and keep striving for excellence. But the research actually shows that it’s likely to compromise your goals and undermine your efforts in all aspects of life, from academic or health related efforts to personal or professional.

So again, it’s important to be able to reflect on what it is that you’re not confident or comfortable about

P: Yeah

M: and then be able to take the resulting negative self-talk and actively try and combat that.

P: I think the interesting part of that is undermining your efforts I think that for me really resonates because it’s subtle little changes that goes with that negative self-talk that is ultimately, it doesn’t create massive cheats in terms of your work performance but it undermines you and that’s not great for when you’re trying to deal with negotiations and trying to deal with, with different people in high tense situations where you’re making calculated decisions, you need to feel confident and in that way I think it does relate to the sport experience. You need to be in control and feel secure.

M: Yep, and there’s a whole body of research right now and a shift in thinking in corporate world’s about psychological safety and the importance of psychological safety. It’s a hot topic of the moment, and really, what we’re saying is it’s about everyone feeling that they have a role to play in the team and that they’re valued for their role and what they do in the team and it’s really tough if you don’t feel valued to then go out and perform your job and stop yourself from getting into that negative self-talk.

P: Absolutely

M: You know, [that] situation that means that you have to then focus on the positive self-talk. Now some of it can be grounded in real life. You might have some horrible colleagues.

[Laughter]

M: and they might not like you, right.

[Laughter]

M: And then it’s about fighting with yourself to be comfortable with your own self value and self-worth. And then other times it’s purely in your own head and that’s the other thing that you need to reflect on I think.

P: Being positive with that that state is again coming back to what we were talking about earlier. Have you done the investment? Having spent some time doing some self-reflection, and I think that those cynics out there who just dismiss it, and that was my Mum, emotions didn’t matter. One of her great quotes is ‘stress wasn’t around when I was young.’

M: [Laugh] See these are the people that we’re doing this podcast for.

P: Absolutely, yeah. ‘Don’t believe in stress doesn’t exist’ and she’s probably the most stressed out person I know.

[Laughter]

P: Poor Mum, I’m giving her a bit of a bashing here. [Laugh]

M: Your Mum I think is more indicative of an entire older generation who were taught that way.

P: Absolutely yes.

So practising self-compassion. Let’s bring it back.

M: So what, what are we talking about? What is practising self-compassion?

P: I think it’s different for every individual, but I think there’s some broad terms we can bring to the conversation and those are a combination of mindful awareness, self-kindness and a recognition about common humanity.

M: What, we’re all human and make mistakes. Is that what we’re talking about?

P: Essentially yes, not being too judgemental, understanding when someone has made a mistake and also taking responsibility for that. Putting your hand up and going ‘oh whoops, I did wrong.’

M: But then letting it go.

P: Exactly, yes and that’s the judgmental part coming into it. Trying not to be too judgemental. When you’re doing that self-reflection, it’s really important about not being too hard on yourself. Give yourself a break, give yourself some love. Be that understanding person that pat’s you on the shoulder and says “it’s OK”.

[Laughter]

M: So if you find yourself in a negative frame of mind and you want to work on some self-compassion. We’ve got three tips that you can try to put into practise.

Firstly, start journaling. So the first step to better understanding yourself and your negative self-talk is to fully grasp what’s going on. Take a couple of weeks and every evening, reflect on the day, and write down your negative and positive self-talk throughout the day.

Secondly, have a look at that over time. So once you’ve done your two weeks, have a look at all the things that you’ve been saying to yourself, find some patterns in there if you can and find what it is in your past that has led to this moment. Why are you saying these negative things to yourself?

Thirdly, once you’ve identified what it is you’re saying, why it is you’re saying it. Your job is to then give yourself some positive affirmations that you can use to combat the negative self-talk.

So once you’re aware of the problem, you’ve then got to shift your behaviour. So write down 2 to 3 things that will combat the negative things you’ve been saying. And every morning before you leave the house or if you’re walking in to work I want you to say these things out loud to yourself and keep up the journaling if you can, so that you can see whether you’re making any changes over time. So they’re the three things you can do to help get started on being more compassionate to yourself.

P: Another tip that I love and this is a bit of a creative one. I call it using the Dragon.

M: OK… I’m intrigued.

P: We’re going to go a bit linear on this one. Externalising the self. So have a conversation with yourself. But externalise it. So for me it came when my father passed away. I was having anxious moments after the funeral and so forth, getting through the grieving process and I invented a dragon and my little dragon sat in the top left corner of my room. And whenever I started to feel emotional or upset, I would reference the top left corner of my room and see my purple dragon and I’d have a little conversation with him. Now not everybody is going to be buying into this, this is all very creative, but for me –

M: – This is why you’re on this podcast with me. It balances us out.

P: [Laugh]!

M: Not to take anything away from any coping mechanism that helps someone deal with grief. I’m not making light of that at all, but I probably wouldn’t invent a dragon that’s all.

[Laughter]

P: It really helped me, it really helped me calm my breathing, bring myself back to centre and come at the situation at hand from a different perspective, because I felt like I had that buddy, that little guardian angel, that little totem, whatever it is a spirit guide some people might use all those sorts of things are valid because they’re helping it to externalise issue, and sometimes we can’t deal with it all by ourselves. And sometimes you need that little spirit guide or that somebody else that is going to go ‘You know what, it’s OK, let’s try this one’.

M: Yep. So essentially, what we’re saying is it’s about treating yourself like you treat your friends. You never say to your friends ‘you’re really not that intelligent are you Pete.’

P: [Laughter]

M: ‘How have you gotten through life so far?’

P: [Still Laughing]

M: So why do we think it’s okay to say it to ourselves? It really is crazy. If you were to write town and say aloud what we say to ourselves and say it to another person you never would absolutely would never say to someone’s face.

P: Sometimes it’s good to write those negative things down when you’re in that space because when you come back to it and go ‘Oh my god, did I really say that about myself, do I really hate myself that much.

M: Yep and I think that is the beauty of all this. Is that, you’re getting more of an understanding of yourself as a person and be kind, be kind to others, be kind to yourself. OK

We’re done for today. So thank you for joining us. If you want to hear more please remember to subscribe and like this podcast.

P: Until next time be kind to yourself. Bye

M: I think Ellen’s already got that one.

P: [Laugh] Oh, d’oh.

M: Yeah, you can’t take that. So… don’t be kind to yourself…?

P: [Laugh] No that doesn’t work…

[Laughter]

M: Bye

P: See ya

COVID-19 Check-in (E11)

by

Happiness for Cynics podcast – Episode 11

Welcome back to Season 2! What crazy times we’re living in! Pete and Marie have a COVID-19 check-in and a chat about their own happiness levels, share how they’re staying happy and what they’re seeing around them.

Things we Referenced in This Episode

Need a laugh? Watch the Poor Jennifer video (below).

Or call up a friend on Messenger and have a good laugh at each other as you try the filters!

Pete and Marie having a good ol’ chat on Facebook Messenger

For purpose and something meaningful to fill empty hours: take a look at the free online courses at Udemy and EdX.

To connect , make sure you do a COVID-19 check-in with your friends and family regularly via video (if you can). You can use Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger.

To stay fit and healthy, here’s a 20-minute beginners workout that killed me the other day. It’s not for beginners, I swear! But if you are after a true beginners work-out try this one.

Save a business: We also do a call out to Glebe Point Diner, in Sydney, who are doing take-away food at the moment. Support them if you can, their food is awesome and service is amazing!

Transcript

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

P: Hi there, I’m Peter Furness. I’m a wanna-be lunchtime guru, fantasy dragon lover and all around thrill seeker with insular tendencies. Each week we will bring you the latest news and research in the world of positive psychology, otherwise known as happiness.

M: Yes, you can find us both at MarieSkelton.com. The site uses a lot of the same research we talk about here on the podcast. So if you want to follow up with anything was spoken about head on over there. So, on to today’s episode.

[Happy music]

M: So can we get the audio right this time?

P: We just did a whole take without any audio from Marie. [laughing]

M: Haha, these are the crazy Covid times we’re living in. So, this episode is a bit of a check in, it’s a Covid-19 sucks party. Yay!

P: Yay! Happy hands, jazz hands!

M: Which is how supposedly we’re all going to greet each other in the future. There will be no more touching.

P: Well, I love…. the musical theatre people have been doing this for decades. We’ve been greeting each other with jazz hands. We can’t kiss So we’ve got to do jazz hands.

M: I love it, I’m all down with jazz hands as the new way to great people moving forward. So Covid-19. So today we’re going to do things a little bit differently, something a little bit different and do a bit of a check in. And well, let’s just start with the check in the rest can be a secret.

P: Absolutely. How are you?

M: You beat me, you got in there. OK, well I’m doing really well. I’m into the end of week two of working from home. I’ve got a great employer who got us quick smart, all set up and locked and loaded to work from home. And my leaders have been checking in with us. We’ve had great communication from my employer.

Good reassurance that our jobs are safe for now. You know, as much as you can reassure anyone in these crazy times and I am a bit of an introvert, so I’m loving being at home, and I am going straight from working to… working on my podcast and then working on my blog, and I’m just like a pig in mud. Really. Yeah.

P: Happy space.

M: Yeah, and look for me, I know that many people are not happy. I’m definitely keeping an eye on my colleagues and family and friends.

P: I think that’s the thing is making sure that you do check in. I’ve actually gone back to thinking about social media, and it’s funny for me because I’m not working at the moment. I’m on the other side of the scale. I’m having to find things and find routines and all that sort of stuff. Part of that for me has been a bit of ah, maybe a bit of a dedication to going, right, let’s check in with people. Let’s reach out using social media and just go, Hey, you’re living on your own, You okay?

And I’ve been trying to do that with individuals each day and possibly people that I haven’t spoken into for a while. And I’m like, No, I’ve got to reach out and just check. I know a lot of people who are working from home, but they also live alone on. That’s a dangerous spot to be in at this point in time, when we are cut off from people we’re cut off from affection, we’re cut off from… even if we are introverts, being in a gym where you’re around people, being at the shops where you’re around people, going to the park where you’re around people, that isn’t happening.

So connectedness and social connectedness, as we’ve talked about in season one, is really important for our happiness. We are social creatures, and social beings, and we need that to be able to generate a lot of stuff that we need to be content and joyful and wellbeing

M: …and happy. Absolutely. And more than that, what keeps people happy is the deep relationships. And that’s why, as you said, it’s so important to pick up the phone, particularly if you’ve got video conferencing or a video chat functionality. WhatsApp have it now, Messenger has it, most phones you can call video to video.

P: We had a hilarious time yesterday. Peter finally figured out how to put the little effects on his face when he’s doing video chats! I think a conversation that could have taken two minutes went for 20!! Because who doesn’t need a laugh right now?

M: Absolutely, we do. We all need a little laughter, but we do need that… going back to that social connection… we do need that social connection and you need to maintain relationships, and it’s harder to do it over distance.

P: It’s different. It’s not necessarily harder.

M: We’ll agree to disagree on this one.

P: I think it’s a different interaction, but you can still maintain the connection in the relationship it’s just a different way of doing it.

M: Absolutely.

P: And we are lucky in this day and age that we do have videoconferencing because that visual reference is actually really important. You can’t tell context by someone’s delivery over text. Over the phone it’s still pretty good, but we’ve all been on that period where a text message in misinterpreted. It’s so easy to misinterpret just plain text. So videoconferencing, seeing someone space, and when you ask someone, how are you? And they’re like, “Oh, I’m fine.” It’s like damn it, I can’t actually tell that because I can’t say see you. So, we are fortunate in this stone age that we’ve got that facility because that was a really important part of maintaining those connections, and having that visual stimuli and being able to see someone and say yeah they’re fine, I saw them yesterday.

M: Absolutely, and you mentioned social media and I think the trick there is not to confuse being on social media with connecting with people. There’s a mindfulness to this, so using social media as a tool to connect with other people — for instance, the messenger functionality on Facebook – and using that to make a phone call with video is a very different thing from mindlessly scrolling for five hours on end because you’ve got nothing better to do. So, the mindless scrolling, the research is really clear on this, it is so bad for your mental health. And so I think the next thing that you need to be aware of apart from maintaining those social bonds, is what you do with your time.

P; This is where I’m struggling a little bit.

M: We’ve spoken about purpose before, and again, and I don’t know many of you may or may not have seen some of the videos on my site. And I talk about the change storm and how to deal with this constantly changing world that we live in. And there’s three things: one is that social connection, and the second is you’ve got to have purpose and meaning, and that just means something that you do that gives your day some structure and that you can enjoy the journey of doing it. You know? And setting goals.

P: yep, finding that routine. It’s waking up and going right, I’ve got to get a schedule in place, and I have no idea what I’m going to achieve that there’s going to be four things I’m going to write down. So, I’ve taken to writing things down on my pantry in chalk yeah, as they pop into my head as I’m having that morning cup of tea, it’s like, right, I’m going to do the crawl space today. I’m going to clean up the backyard. I’m going to write a blog. So, it’s having that little bit of routine that anchors us, and that gives us amazing clarity of mind, and it actually improves our mental health. There’s a lot of research out there that actually supports this. Look at me quoting research and getting scientific, you’ve changed me Marie.

M: I do want to caution, though that doing your to do list is going… is not going to help you in the long run. So as important as it is to catch up on all those chores that you’ve been wanting to do umm, and they are filling time in your day… You are on the squeakiest chair today.

P: It’s leather. It’s very pretty [laugh]

M: We’re just out of our element right now!

P: Yeah, everything is changing.

M: But some really good things, so firstly, set some goals and then work to achieve them, so anything you can do in a day is probably not going to give you the fulfilment that you need in the longer term and at the moment, the world.. we don’t know whether this is going to be a few weeks, just not very likely it looks like or a few months or a lot of months. So you mentioned Pete that you found in your crawl out cleaning activity you’re learning French, and I see here it’s actually a VHS video

P: Oh dear, I thought it was a CD. No it’s CD.

M: Of no, it’s just a VHS size.

P: I did. I don’t know where it has been for all these years, but there it is. And so there’s my next six weeks. Is getting my French up to speed?

M; Yeah, and that is a perfect goal to dive into, to have flow when you’re learning, and to feel accomplishment along the way. Then there’s some great resource is online for anyone, Udemy, or EdX, ed e-d-x. They’ve all got free online courses run by some of the top universities in the world, so you can study and a great one I’m going to go back to is University of Berkeley, sorry University of California, Berkeley. Their psychology department run a happiness course, and also, if you Google it, Yale’s most attended course is a course on happiness as well. I don’t know which platform that’s on, but you could probably Google that too. And take a course on happiness, for free.

P: This’s the time to be doing those sorts of things, and I like what you’re talking about there Marie in terms of the to do list, along with long term goals. So it’s okay, to go “well, I’m going to clean the backyard.” That’s a short-term goal, and that’s still good to occupy your time because you’re writing it down and it is an item that you can put in. But with those longer-term goals, it’s almost like you need to mix your day up a little bit with short stuff on. Then there’s got to be some long-term goals in there that are plugging away at something that is a bit more long-term that’s going to sustain you.

M; And let’s be honest. If you can’t get to painting the bathroom like your wife’s been nagging you to do for us 10 years now, you never will. She’s gonna have to give up on

P; Let it go [singing frozen]

M: Weeding the garden. Whatever your thing is that you know you should do, but you just never get around to it. If you’re not going to do it during Covid-19 it is never happening. And you should look at how to outsource that.

P: Know when you are beaten.

M: There are many people who will do that stuff for you. [laughing] Yeah, I think, I think it’s a really good call out, having purpose and also having those deep social bonds. And the third thing that — if you can’t tell, I’m writing a book and researching this right now — but the third thing is self care. And one of the things that a lot of people who are working from home have been doing is realising that they can spend from morning to night sitting at their computer. Yep, they’re not getting up for lunch a lot of the time, or they get their lunch and come straight back to their desks and they’re spending huge amounts… like 10 hours at a time sitting at their computer.

And we need to be just a bit more mindful about looking after ourselves right now. Look, emotionally. It is top of mind, but physically, are you getting enough sleep? Are you doing a bit of exercise? There’s some great YouTube videos that you can put on your TV, You can do your yoga downward dog stuff like Pete does, whatever. Or a full cardio workout and a lot of the gyms are streaming.

P: So many of the personal trainers and gyms are streaming their content and it’s valuable information. I got to Wednesday this week after spending pretty much this week in isolation. I’ve been going into work occasionally for necessary purposes, but really I’m in kind of isolation mode and realise that it was so easy to not do my normal exercise. To not go and play some volleyball, which I adore. To not be swinging off the rings or the chin up bar because I couldn’t get into my training studio. However, on Wednesday I made the conscious choice and said, No, I’m going to do it, and I found myself procrastinating. I could just clean that knob on that door one more time with the Diggers vanilla methylated spirits. Or maybe I should just cook… and I was like, “no, go on, get changed.”

M: Diggers, what?

P: It’s really pretty. It’s really nice and smelling.

M: Whatevs [laughs]

P: So I went an got changed on. That was, that was the lever. I had to get out of my casual clothes and into my work out gear. That change made me go down and do my little routine that I’m normally used to doing for my warm up downstairs on my little rug. Great, awesome did it. And I bought a pair of gymnastic rings about six months ago with the full intention of setting them up somewhere. That’s where they were. And it was that right? I got them out of the packet.

M: See!? One of those things that you probably would have never done if it hadn’t been for Covid-19.

P: Possibly it was the lever, though. It actually because I committed to doing something and even though I didn’t have any hand weights or kettlebells, I found two LPG gas bottles on it worked a treat.

M: See, I am, as I said at the end of week two, and every morning I get up, I put my gym gear on. Then I sit at my computer for 14 hours. [laughter] Until today I finally went and put that YouTube video on it, and I found this great video. It was number one on YouTube, 20 minute work out. I thought I’d just do 20 minutes now and then I might do it again at lunchtime because really, it is so, so unhealthy to spend that much time sitting, and I’m so aware of it. And today I did do quite a few more meetings standing up and standing up and  stretching. So I turned the video off and had a bit of a cheeky move on the spot and get everything moving again.

And I really need to be a lot better at doing that. Anyway, I turned on this 20 minutes YouTube video this morning and made it to 10 minutes, and I was like Jesus Christ! This is not for beginners! [laughter] It’s crazy, two weeks and I just lost all my fitness.

P: Well, it’s not hard to do and this is the thing we have to move. We are meant to move and people who are spending 10 and 14 hours of your computer, you’re not helping yourselves. We need to move, you know, because your productivity goes through the floor. If we’re not taking breaks for lunch, if we’re not having that 11 o’clock morning coffee where you walk away from the computer and you sit down in the backyard and look at the birds and look at the clouds and all that sort of stuff, it stops your brain from going into a wire tracking it gives you fresh stimulus. It accesses different parts of your brain. Which means the brain is more turned on, it’s more receptive to other stuff. You’re walking away from an issue, you’re coming back and looking at it with fresh eyes. New thoughts are going to pop up because your brain waves are firing in different lobes of your brain. Exercise and movement is another part of that. Making sure that you keep the neuro plasticity by using your physical self.

M: [whispers “I think Pete’s on a bit of a rant”] Keep going hun.

P: [Laughs] I’ve been doing this for years!

[laughter]

P: Should I stop now?

M; Mmmm, maybe. Pete says do exercise everyone.

P: Move people. People get up and move even if it is being like Chinese Revolutionary Army and standing up on doing star jumps and being silly and swinging your arms in the air, just do it makes a world of difference.

M; Oh, we should all have a dance party.

P: Hey I’m all for the dance parties. Yep.

M: So I did read that in the UK there was some DJs that we’re doing some dance parties from their lounge rooms, and everyone was going to dial in. Love it. So, we’ve only got a few minutes left. What are your thoughts for how this might change humanity? I think this is such a defining time in our generation, and it’s the implications just like World War One, World War two. And I’m not saying that war is on the same level as a pandemic. But…

P:  it’s a serious of change, though. That’s the thing that changes the way the view things because you have a relative experience speaking with my mom today. My mom’s a war baby and good old mom. She’s like, You know, it’s just like the end of the Second World War and I’m like, Well, yeah, but remember Mum we haven’t had that experience. And she was like, you kids have had it too good and was like, “no, we’ve just had it. And we’ve gotten used to this comfort level of of having access. Now we have a relative point of reference, and I think that will be the thing that changes a lot of people. People are going to realise what’s important. I think your priority will change

M: we might be grateful!

P: There’s a lot of positive change that could come from this.

M: I am such a firm believer…. Look, I’ve always said I’m a cynic, but I’m also very positive, if you can’t tell. So you know, I like to have a joke, and it’s probably my sense of humour that I like to throw a bit of shade at people. But I think this is going to help us to refocus on what’s important in life.

P: Definitely.

M: And I think that we were getting to such a point where we were letting the stressed of life run our lives, we were being reactive and responsive.

P: Yes I agree with you.

M: with work pressures, family pressures, keeping up with the Joneses, keeping up with the latest technolog, FOMO, , et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And now I had a great conversation with a colleague today who was saying, You know, I went to this, um, baking with my kids and then we went and did some gardening, and it was such good bonding time. And normally she was saying she would have spent all that time running around and taking them swimming and getting to and from work and all the rest of it. And I think it’s coming back to basics, and it’s all the stuff that we’ve been talking about Pete! It’s calling your mom. It is finding something that you can take pleasure in and that you contribute to…

P: it’s mindfulness

M: It’s self care. Mindfulness, kindness to others looking after your body physically, so drinking water, getting sleep, doing exercise, eating right. Like all of those wonderful things that we’ve been talking about. We’re finally returning to that. So if you take Covid out, we’re all going to be super happy. And there’ll be no need for a podcast.

[laughter]

P: A little reminder, maybe, a little reminder to look at the things. You missed one thing in there was which for me is really important from this result is a sense of community.  And that we are realising that the community in which we live is actually important to us.

M: I said social.

P: You did. I want to throw community out there because it’s a little bit more specific in terms of the people you have around you. When you have that happiness point, you need to reach out. And who’s that community? So it might not be the community you’re living, it might not be your neighbours, but it’s the person who lives down there down the hill and up the other stairs…

M: Oh that’s me!

P: That’s you [laughter].

M; I live down the hill and up the stairs. [laughter].

P: That’s the person that you reach out to you when you’re going. Oh, I feel like a coffee with someone.

M: I’ll make a coffee in my kitchen. You make a coffee in yours, and we’ll put funny face filters on ourselves.

P: Haha, yeah, so that sense of community, I think, is what one thing, is the one thing that will come out of this for a lot of people, and holding that community close, which is really important and vital. And as we know from the research, it helps with happiness.

M; Oh, absolutely. I’ve decided to make it my mission. If anyone’s in Glebe in Sydney, there’s a great restaurant called Glebe Point Diner, and I’ve made it my mission to make sure that they don’t go out of business during these tough times. So they’re doing take away now. call them up.

P: I think everyone’s get their favourite coffee shop for their favourite restaurant. Support them, they need it. A lot of people need that support, and it’s really important, even if you’re not going in. And I went past my coffee boys the other day. I didn’t need a coffee. I was already dialled up from my own coffee at home, but I spent five minutes talking to them, they’re my community, and they’ve been my community for 12 years.

M; Yeah. So I’m going to look after the other thing. I just wrote a post on this this week. There are a lot of animals being returned to shelters right now. So if you’re in a position to foster, you don’t even have to adopt. But if you happen to fall in love and keep him forever, then you know, every pet deserves a forever home…

P:  even if, even if your husband makes you promise that you’re never going to pick up another stray cat?

[laughter]

M: It was in my vows, part of my vows to my husband, and I don’t think he would have taken me otherwise. No more strays. But if you can help out, the benefits as far as higher oxytocin levels, just benefits are through the roof. Also, having dogs is good for excise because you walk them.

P: Absolutely

M:  So from a mental health point of view, cats and dogs are all fabulous and then exercise. So if you’re struggling with those things right now, particularly if you do live alone

P: Foster a pet for six weeks!

M: Consider helping out. A lot of people are in financial stress, and you know. Unfortunately, that means they’ve got to ask for help from a shelter because those pets right now have nowhere to go. All right. Well, that was a really depressing way to finish. Do you have a joke? Something we can laugh at?

P: I’m terrible with jokes. I can’t do jokes, I come up with bad ones and dad ones. I’m horrible. I say go Disney, get some Disney. Do something childlike, go and dance around. I think we were talking before about the YouTube video featuring Jennifer.

M: Yes! Jennifer, go watch the Jennifer video. I’m sorry, Jennifer. I’m sure you’re lovely.

P: I think Jennifer’s gonna benefit from this.

M: For those of you who would like to know, there are a good 8 to 10 people on a video conference call and someone’s talking. And Jennifer is one of the participants, and she stands up and obviously thinks her video isn’t on and takes a laptop into the bathroom with her and pulls her pants down. You can’t see anything for you pervs out there, pulls her pants down and everyone you see their eyes they’re just in shock

P: [laughter] No one would say anything.

M: And the person who’s talking stops talking, and it’s at that point that Jennifer looks over and realises she’s on video.

P: Hey, I’m all for nudity. I think what’s wrong with a little bit of ass every now and then?

[silence]

P: It’s how I say hello to people. You’re in my inner circle if I strip off in front of you.

M: It’s true.

P: Marie know it. Most of my volleyball team a knows it as well.

M: It’s a bit of a problem.

P: Really?

M: No, I’m ok with it though.

P: On that happy note….

M: Yes, we will let you go. Stay safe, everyone, and we will see you next week.

P: Stay happy folks.

What is Flow and How to Find it (E5)

by

Happiness for Cynics podcast – episode 5

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

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

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

Transcription

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

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

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

[Happy music]

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

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

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

P: Oh well done Muz

[Laughter]

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

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

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

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

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

It’s all about the task at hand.

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

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

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

P: I particularly like that last one

M: [Laugh]

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

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

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

[Laughter]

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

P: Yes

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

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

[Laughter]

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

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

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

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

P: – in a corporate environment

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

[Laughter]

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

It is: Stop the distractions. Right?

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

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

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

P: Oh yeah.

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

[Laughter]

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

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

[Laughter]

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

[Laughter]

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

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

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

M: [Laugh]

P: So why flow? Why have flow?  

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

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

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

[Laughter]

M: I got nothing.

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

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

P: Interesting.

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

[Laughter]

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

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

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

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

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

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

P: [Laugh] Yep

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

P: [Laugh]

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

P: [Laugh]

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

P: You have to be invested –

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

P: Exactly. Yeah definitely.

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

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

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

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

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

P: Nice, we’d love to hear from you.

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

P: See you next week, bye.

Meet besties Marie and Pete

Marie and Pete

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

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

Marie and Pete

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

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

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

What is Happiness? (E1)

by

Happiness for Cynics podcast – season 1, episode 1

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

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

Transcript

[Intro]

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

P: Hi there. I’m Peter Furness. I’m a remedial massage therapist, dance and movement practitioner, yoga loving global adventurer. Each week we will bring to you the latest news and research in the world of positive psychology, otherwise known as happiness.

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

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

[happy intro music]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

M: It’s a cult

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

M: Yes we shall.

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

M: uh huh, each to their own.

P: [Laughter]

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

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

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

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

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

P: shut down!

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

P: because it’s all about the research

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

P: Unendingly happy people are so boring.

M: [Laughter]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

P: Oh dear [laughter]

M: Tell me, Are you happy?

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

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

P: Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

P: [Laughter]

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

P: Definitely

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

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

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

P: Yep, I would agree with you there.

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

P: [Laughter]

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

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

M: Be happy.

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

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

P: Yay

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

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

M: Yeah, definitely.

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

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

P: Call your Grandma.

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

P: Very true

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

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

P: Oops, that’s probably me..

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

P: [Laughter]

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

P: Lots of different topics.

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

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

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

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

P: Inspiring people.

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

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

Meet besties Marie and Pete

Marie and Pete

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

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

Marie and Pete

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

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

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