happy

Happiness is Contagious (E8)

15/03/2020 by Marie

Happiness for Cynics podcast

Did you know that happiness and laughter are both contagious? We present the research to back up that ludicrous statement and some tips on how to get you some happiness and laughter in your life. Plus we present a secret crazy study about happy sweat.

In this episode, Marie mentions that smiling at people has different meanings in different cultures, here are a few articles about that:

Transcription

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

P: Hi there I’m Peter Furness and I’m a health practitioner, unicorn lover and wanna-be handstand achiever. Each week we will bring you the latest news and research in the field of positive psychology, otherwise known as happiness. Marie, you’ve got a blog.

M: Yes, I do. It’s at marieskelton.com, which is a site about major life changes and how to cope with them. And 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. And when I say practical, I’m talking about science backed tips.

P: Always science with Marie Skelton.

M: [Laugh]

P: Never the fluff.

M: Yep, never the fluff. You can also find me on Twitter. My handle is @marieskelton.

And on to today’s episode, which is about the contagion off laughter…

P: [Laughter]

M: Wait, what are we talking about today?

P: The contagion of happiness. There’s a great example there. [Laugh]

M: Well there’s a bit more to it. It’s about contagion in general.

P: In general, yes, yes, as much as you can sneeze it on someone and give them influenza, you can sneeze on someone or laugh on them and give them happiness.

[Laughter]

M: We’ll get into that…

Welcome to today’s show.

P: [Laugh]

M: What are we calling this one?

[Happy music]

M: So welcome to today’s show. I’m here with Peter and, as we mentioned before the little interlude, we’re here to talk about contagious-ness and contagion just missed.

P: Contagious-ness, that’s a good one [laugh].

M: Yep, yep, yep. You’ve really thrown me through a loop and I’m not sure what to call this episode.

[Laughter]

M: But we are going to talk about how happiness is contagious and then there’s some other great studies that I’m fascinated with that we want to share with our listeners today, so maybe we can start with the evolution of smiling and laughter. So the smile can be traced back over 30 million years of evolution to a fear grin, which stem from monkeys and apes who often used barely clenched teeth, to portray to predators that they were harmless. So humans over time have turned this into a form of greeting, and there’s a lot of contention as to the exact origins of smiling and laughter. And there isn’t really one true theory that everyone agrees on. But there is a little bit of research indicates that the smile has evolved over time into a way of attracting mates in early humans.

P: So basically showing a demeanour of joy or happiness makes other people trust you more it makes people be more receptive to you and know that you aren’t threatening. So, get the sunglasses off people.

[Laughter]

M: More than that, you know if everyone’s got their face in their phone we’re not smiling at each other.

P: Absolutely.

M: So one of the things that my mom used to lament when we moved to a big city, Canberra, which is not a city but she came from Newcastle, which was slightly smaller at the time was that people didn’t smile and say hello when they passed each other on the sidewalk.

P: Yes, it’s the country NSW’s thing as well and then think well, it’s the recognition of someone as your walking past the tip of the hat, a finger in the air, just that twinkle in the eye. It’s the recognition of, yep I see you.

M: But when you move to a bigger city, the people who have that twinkle in their eye and say hi, are normally creepy and will follow you.

P: [Laugh]

M: So, there’s maybe a little bit of a defence mechanism going on there.

P: True, true.

M: It’s like when you’re the only person on the bus and that person comes and sits right next to you.

P: Oh, yes…

[Laughter]

M: Anyway so maybe that’s what happens when you get to bigger cities. Also, you don’t know far more people. But the other thing that I found out was that smiling when you pass people is also cultural, and I’d have to look this up, I’ve just come to this in my mind and haven’t done any research into this before right now.

I remember reading an article with people asking ‘What is it with everyone smiling at me?’

P: [Laugh]

M: ‘You’re all creepy.’

So, I think there’s a cultural element to that.

P: I’m going to put myself out here, I do smile at people on the street a lot actually and I find it interesting to play with because some people really don’t like it. [Laugh] and I’m terrible if someone’s got a dog I’m instantly like, I’m smiling at the dog because I like dogs but then I always make a point of making sure I look at the owner because too often the owners of dogs are ignored. You know you should at least say isn’t he or she beautiful.

M: Yeah, don’t start patting the owner, though.

P: Oh, that could be fun.

[Laughter]

M: I think that’s harassment.

P: I think that’s the definition of the creepy person on the bus.

[Laughter]

M: So you had a study that you want to talk about just about happiness in general. Right?

P: Yes. The study was published in the British Medical Journal and this is all around happiness contagion.

This study took 4700 people stayed on them for over 20 years from 1983 to 2003 and it promotes that happiness, like a cold in winter, spreads. So it is passed on to people that are around you. It assed people’s emotional well-being and they took questionnaires of participants feelings of well-being and general demeanour. They also gave these studies to the participants spouse’s, friends, relatives, people they knew in their daily life, creating a network of more than 50,000 subjects, which is a pretty decent sized research project to be honest.

M: Absolutely.

P: It kind of came out some interesting findings. The really interesting one is that, yes happiness does spread and they even get percentages. So when one person is happy, they raised the odds of their spouse being happy by 8% their sibling by 14% and their neighbour by 34%.

And I found this really interesting because it talks about the close proximity of people in their daily interactions. So one big happy person, if you meet that person once the effect of that happiness being passed on to you might be short term, whereas when you’re involved in a daily contact with people, when you’re involved in intimate contact over the fence, as you are with neighbours, and I’m thinking, particularly of my mother in this instance, happiness flow on effect is more than a third. That’s pretty high.

M: I’m still thinking about you having intimate moments with your neighbour. How many people that you meet do you have-

[Laughter]

P: Well, I’m the hands on person so… no I’m very respectful honestly.

M: And I think, I think deep down humans know this. We gravitate to the positive, energetic people in our classes at school and to the exuberant and dynamic personalities. And I think that’s a natural subconscious thing in general.

So something in that research that I thought was really interesting as well, though, was that work spaces were a happiness free zone.

[Laughter]

So to explain what I mean by that, so that the researches don’t call me up and go ‘what have you said?’ So, happiness didn’t appear to spread amongst co-workers. So the researchers attributed that to the sometimes competitive nature of our work relationships. But if you think about it, a happy person will increase their spouse’s odds of being happy by 8%, their siblings odds of being happy by 14%, their neighbours odds of being happy by 34% and their co-workers odds of being happy zero.

P: Zero [laugh]

M: Nothing, nada. So having happy or not happy people around your work? Maybe not, not happy, but having happy people around you makes no impact at all.

P: Possibly more focused on other things… Or all that other stuff that we have to focus on when we’re working.

M: Yeah, a bit depressing really.

And then the other thing, just to point out on that study was that the proximity thing that you’re talking about. So this is why I think you can have a big impact on your neighbours but family siblings they’ve got to be close by. So anyone that’s more than a mile away, really didn’t get much of the impact.

P: Yes, however, just to go further into that as well, the research also says that there are three degrees of separation for this network effect, so it might not even be the person that’s directly associated with you that you are affecting. But, the researchers found, is that the people who know that person and the people that know that person’s person are also directly affected by someone’s happiness. And I think that’s an interesting point as well is that your happiness can spread.

Just in support of that research as well a Harvard research professor [Medical Sociology and Medicine], Nicholas Christakis researched the contagion of emotions in terms of the larger context of social networks.

M: I told you we were talking about contagion.

P: [Laugh] He found that, in support of what Marie said in that having a happy friend within a mile of you increased the probability that you will be happy and that that close social network is the most prevalent factor in terms of buying into someone else’s happiness and having that affect you.

M: The best example of the laughter contagion is, and if you haven’t seen it, I encourage you get onto Google or YouTube and look up the Skype laughter chain, and it currently has 32 million views on YouTube and the premise behind this laughter chain was, we watch someone laughing and someone else watches that person laughing and you filmed them, and that person starts laughing at the first person. And then you film a third person watching the second person laughing at the first person and then a fourth and fifth and a sixth. And so you end up with series of people laughing, one after the other, and I dare you not to laugh at this, at this chain of people laughing. It is contagious.

P: Yep

M: Now they have magically found people with unique laughs and it is truly, it’s hilarious. So we’re going to play you a short, clip. So without infringing on anyone’s copyright, here it is the Skype laughter chain. And here is a short listen.

[Sound clip of Skype laughter chain]

P: It’s quite funny when we were watching that we were walking down the street at Brighton Le-Sands. As I was effusively laughing, as I tend to do, people that were walking past us started to crack a smile.

[Laughter]

P: So it just shows that, that expression of happiness is actually a key as well in that you can affect someone’s small little day, and I find that myself if I’m walking past people that are having a great old time and being stupid. I’ll walk past a have a little smile.

M: I think I’m getting old. Sometimes I judge now.

P: Oh well, you’re the cynic here. [Laugh] See I’m the fluffy one and you’re the cynic.

M: I think it depends [on] what they’re doing. And also I find if kids are laughing. That’s just far more innocent and cute.

P: Oh, see I’m probably on the other foot on that one. I’m like ‘go away’. Small children aagghh. [Laugh]

Now coming back to the chimpanzee research it’s the mimicry it’s the decree that researchers found that harkens back to our ape like ancestors is that we mimic people’s laughter and they did a study on this, with the American Psychological Association publishing a study by the University of Portsmouth, where they watched a group of 57 chimpanzees. And these chimpanzees were mimicking the laughs that were coming out and the laughs that were coming out second were slightly different, but it had that flow on effect.

M: So we’ve seen that feelings of happiness can be transferred through vision and hearing. But did you know that happiness is also contagious via our sense of smell?

P: You’re going to love this one. This is Marie’s favourite bit. [Laugh]

M: I had to find a way to get this into one of the episodes. [Laugh] So I’m referring to a study which suggests that happy people give off an odour that makes other people smile.

P: In essence sweaty people are happy people?

M: No, sweat makes you happy.

P: OOhh!

M: But only some types of sweat.

[Laughter]

M: So it gets better, let me explain how researchers did this study. So they collected samples from male participants as they watched videos like bare necessities and funny clips and pranks. Guys watch these funny and or fun light-hearted clips. They also had another group that watched movies that were made to make them feel afraid or no emotional response at all. And they collected sweat off all of these people. The sweat samples were then presented to female participants-

P: [Laugh]

M: Which I find kind of a bit strange. And then the female participants were recorded while they were smelling the sweat samples for their facial expressions and when sniffing sweat from someone who felt happy that we’re more likely to smile.

P: Is it wrong that I just had an image of a room full of men with their armpits in the air and these women walking along having a good long draw. That’s kind of how I think they should have done the experiment.

[Laughter]

M: I don’t know but this experiment just, it’s hilarious to me, absolutely hilarious. They get a whole bunch of men, they take their sweat then they get a bunch of woman in and they film their reactions to them smelling the sweat.

P: [Laugh]

M: But what it does do is that supports the idea that surrounding ourselves with happier people, and their scents –

P: and their scent.

M: – can bring more positive emotion into our lives.

P: It’s all about sniffing each other when it comes down to it. Look at dogs they’ve got it right. They say hello by sniffing someone’s butt.

M: I knew you would take it there.

P: [Laugh]

M: I told you, you couldn’t pat people on the street, now you want to go sniff them.

[Laughter]

P: Alright, I’ll behave. Anyway, so putting this into practise. How do we make ourselves open to the contagion of happiness? Essentially, find happy people. Find the people in your life or around you that are happy that are that effusive celebratory kind of personality, be around them, put yourself in their vicinity even when you’re feeling low or quiet. Sometimes the best thing is to, is to shake yourself off and go ‘No, I’m going to go to that party because I know that such and such is going to be there and I know I’ll key into what they’re actually offering and their vibe and they’re always a fabulous person so I’m going to go along and be a part of that. The other that I love is laugh out loud people. Sometimes people are, they don’t want to laugh, they don’t want to express their happiness. I’m all for being in a movie theatre and having a good old giggle. Performance friends of mine used to love me in the audience because I actually react, sometimes in the middle of this very serious drama theatrical performance they would hear this big guffaw from the audience because I thought it was funny.

M: [Laugh] Great, right in the middle of the serious part.

P: Case and point. Uncle Vanya, Sydney Theatre Company production about five years ago, Richard Roxburgh and Hugo Weaving on stage, it’s meant to be this dark serious Russian play. Ugh, ugh. Not with those two. It was hilarious.

[Laughter]

P: So don’t, don’t stifle your laughter allow yourself to express it because it’s not just you, it’s someone else is going to feel the permission to laugh. And I think that’s a really important one allow yourselves the permission the laugh. The other thing is hosting, host a party, host a barbeque, host a film night. Host a laughter circle where you all lie on the floor with your heads on each other’s stomachs. Do you remember doing that at camps in high school?

M: We did, I actually hosted a laughter workshop at my old work and people loved it we just don’t laugh enough at work.

P: The science proves it, we don’t because of our competitive nature.

[Laughter]

M: The other thing I’ll add to this as far as things you can do, something that I found I had to grow up in order to do it. It was cut negative people out of my life and I don’t want people to jump to cutting people out of their lives just because they having about time. I do believe in loyalty to friends and sticking with them through hard times. There are some people, however, who take far more than they give and will not change. And at some point in my late twenties, I realised who those people were on and felt OK with not calling them to go have coffee or lunch or whatever it was and not making the effort to maintain a relationship. Some of them are were a little bit more abrupt, and others just trailed off. And I let them deliberately trail off, those relationships. And I think that’s really important. On the flip side, you surround yourself with happy people. But you also need to at times protect yourself.

P: I think protection is very vital. If a person is that negative there is a certain amount of loyalty and concern, no one wants to be shutting anyone off. But, ah, you have to look after number one. You have to look after the self-first. And if, if you’re feeling it, then sometimes it’s best to limit that exposure.

M: Yep. OK. Is that it for this week?

P: I think so.

M: I think it is. All right, well there you go. Go sneeze happiness all over people.

P: Go sniff people!

[Laughter]

M: They are the two take outs for this episode.

Thank you for joining us. If you want to hear more, please remember to subscribe. And like this podcast.

P: We will see you next week.

Meet besties Marie and Pete

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

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

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

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

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

What is Flow and How to Find it (E5)

15/03/2020 by Marie

Happiness for Cynics podcast – episode 5

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

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

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

Transcription

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

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

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

[Happy music]

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

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

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

P: Oh well done Muz

[Laughter]

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

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

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

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

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

It’s all about the task at hand.

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

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

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

P: I particularly like that last one

M: [Laugh]

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

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

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

[Laughter]

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

P: Yes

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

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

[Laughter]

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

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

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

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

P: – in a corporate environment

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

[Laughter]

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

It is: Stop the distractions. Right?

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

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

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

P: Oh yeah.

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

[Laughter]

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

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

[Laughter]

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

[Laughter]

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

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

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

M: [Laugh]

P: So why flow? Why have flow?

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

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

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

[Laughter]

M: I got nothing.

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

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

P: Interesting.

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

[Laughter]

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

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

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

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

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

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

P: [Laugh] Yep

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

P: [Laugh]

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

P: [Laugh]

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

P: You have to be invested –

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

P: Exactly. Yeah definitely.

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

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

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

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

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

P: Nice, we’d love to hear from you.

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

P: See you next week, bye.

Meet besties Marie and Pete

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

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

The Importance of Gratitude (E3)

15/03/2020 by Marie

Happiness for Cynics podcast – season 1, episode 3

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

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

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

Transcription

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

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

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

[Happy intro music]

M: So, Peter, why gratitude?

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

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

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

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

P: I apologise to our Victoria listeners.

M: I don’t [Laugh]

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

M: You chose Sydney, just saying.

[Laughter]

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

P: What is gratitude?

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

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

[Laughter]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

P: Yes, definitely.

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

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

M: Yeah, I’ll give it to you.

[Laughter]

I’m just not allowed to say begets apparently.

[Laughter]

M: It’s pompous

P: It’s Stephen Fry!

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Laughter]

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

Matthew McConaughey’s address to graduating students at Houston University

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Laughter]

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

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

M: [Laughter]

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

M: Yeah, I lived in D. C.

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

M: It’s the cold! Everything’s cold!

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

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

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

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

P: Yeah, completely.

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

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

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

You know those people who press the buttons?

[Laughter]

M: We can see you!

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

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

P: Definitely.

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

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

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

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

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

P: identifying it.

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

P: come back

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

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

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

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

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

P: Awe, so quick.

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

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

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

Meet besties Marie and Pete

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

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

What is Happiness? (E1)

15/03/2020 by Marie

Happiness for Cynics podcast – season 1, episode 1

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

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

Transcript

[Intro]

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

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

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.

How to Find Balance in Life

19/02/2020 by Marie

The key to Finding Balance and Living a Good Life

Prefer to watch this on video? Click here.

Do you ever feel a bit overwhelmed by everything you have to do and all the demands on your time? Have you ever wondered about how to find balance in life?

How do you keep balance in your life?
How to achieve balance in life?
What are the benefits of balance?

Life is pretty hectic at times, and it can feel like there’s a constant tension between what you need to get done and what you know you should do.

But the research is clear: happy, resilient people have balance across three key foundations:

Purpose & Meaning
Community & Connection
Health & Wellbeing

These are the people who take change in their stride and weather anything the Change Storm throws their way. They’re confident and they’re killing it!

The trick to finding balance in life is to maintain the balance across these three foundations, especially when things get hectic and crazy, because these are the things that will make you most resilient through the tough times.

Here’s a little bit more about each of these three foundations and how they can help you find balance in life.

Meaning & Purpose

Having a sense of meaning and purpose in life is critical to resiliency and living a happy life. You need it to thrive and flourish. It’s about having a reason to get out of bed in the morning, setting goals and having commitments. Some lucky people get that purpose through their job, but many of us get our purpose through other activities such as volunteering, learning or experiencing new things or caring for others.

Community & Connection

Connecting with others and contributing to your community are proven to build emotional resiliency and make your life happier. It is so important not to neglect this part of your life, especially if it doesn’t come easily, like when work is really busy or if you’re a natural introvert.

Be patient: it can take up to 150 hours to become good friends with someone. So don’t get discouraged if it takes a while to develop new friends.

Health & Wellbeing

Your health and wellbeing is critical to your happiness. Luckily, there is a wealth of information about how to make small changes to your life to make it healthier and improve your wellbeing.

This means that more often than not, you choose to:

eat well and drink plenty of water
get enough sleep, regularly and consistently
do regular exercise every week
remember to rest too!

But remember, it’s about doing the right thing most of the time. Don’t aim for perfection. Setting unrealistic goals is not going to help you, in fact it will be impossible to live up to and you’ll likely just give up.

Download our infographic!

How to be happy – 50 science-backed ways to improve your happiness

12/01/2020 by Marie

Are you looking for some ideas or inspiration to help reduce anxiety, build resiliency, cope with the stresses of modern life or lift your mood?

Positive Psychology is a fairly new sub-field within the study of psychology. It is the study of happiness and looks at how people can live a more fulfilling, satisfying and meaningful life. There has been an explosion of research over the past couple of decades, and one thing is absolutely obvious: you can practice happiness.

Happiness is not about being in a constant state of joy, or about being on a constant high all the time. It’s about positivity and mental wellbeing. It’s enjoying the good times and being able to bounce back from the bad times. It’s grieving when we need to grieve and being resilient when we need resilience.

Take a read below of the top 50 science-backed activities you can incorporate into your life that are proven to help you be happy. Try one or try them all. Try them once or make them a part of your daily, weekly or monthly habits.

But remember, as author Stephen Covey said, “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” So, if you want to be happier or reduce stress, anxiety and negative emotions, pick a few of the below options that work for you, and schedule them into your weekly planner.

50 tips for how to be happy

1. Get a pet or interact with animals

The research shows that interacting with pets increased cortisol levels, making you happier.

2. Build a growth mindset

Having a growth mindset means you never stop learning. Now research shows that it also impacts how you see the world and makes you more likely to thrive in life.

3. Practice smiling

Science shows that once you smile, feedback loops go back to the brain which reinforce feelings of joy and happiness.

4. Be authentic to yourself and your truth

Humanistic psychologists have shown that as their clients become more authentic, they become happier and their psychological wellbeing increases.

5. Reduce your commute time

There are many changes you can make to your life to impact your happiness levels, and one of them is moving closer to work or finding a way to reduce your commute time. It turns out that having a bigger house doesn’t make up for having a longer commute.

6. Plan a holiday

Holidays are great, we all know that — take them whenever you can. But did you know that the biggest boost in your happiness comes not from the vacation itself, but from the act of planning the vacation?

7. Take your lunchbreak and get outside in the sun

A recent study shows that spending time by the sea makes people happier. It also showed that just being outdoors makes you happier — preferably in a non-urban environment, but hey, we’ll take what we can get!

8. Make time for family

There is substantial research into the benefits of close social bonds, but this study looks at the economic impact of having a happy marriage, and a good social life. The results? Good relationships and social bonds not only make you happier, they also make you richer!

9. Meditate

There are many types of meditation, and they all help with happiness. Research shows that participants report feeling more positive emotions and more energetic.

10. Eat lots of fruit and vegies

There is increasing research linking a healthy body to a healthy mind, including this study that showed eating more fruit and vegies led to an increase in motivation and vitality.

11. Discover your purpose or meaning

This one is a no-brainer. Many, many studies have shown that having purpose or meaning is key to happiness. But how do you find your purpose? Check out this article for some inspiration.

12. Do some gardening and plant a tree

Not only does being around trees increase our mental wellbeing, it also has a positive impact on our immune system! Who knew?

13. Practice self-compassion

Give yourself a break! Constantly aiming to be better is exhausting and focusing on what’s ‘wrong’ or needs improvement can lead to negative self-talk. So make sure you balance things out with some self-love and positive talk, or even better, work to stop judging yourself altogether.

14. Be social

Humans are genetically wired to be social animals, after all there is strength in numbers! So make sure you take the time to be social, even if you’re busy or introverted. You could meet a friend for coffee or organise a group to have dinner.

15. Buy some happiness

Let’s be clear: money doesn’t buy happiness (as long as you have enough to cover your basic needs). But you can use money to pay someone else to do the things you don’t like and free up some time for you to do things that will bring you joy.

16. Cut down on sugar

I’m so sad to see this one on the list, but not only is sugar bad for our waistlines, it may also increase our long-term risk of mental health disorders according to this study. Best to limit sugar to special occasions if you can.

17. Find happy people to be around

Sometimes we need to protect ourselves and cut toxic relationships out of our lives. But, have you stopped to consider the impact your partner’s happiness has on your life? Research shows that people with happier partners live longer! A thought worth considering when you’re dating. If that ship has sailed, then why not do something nice for your partner to bring a smile to their face once you’ve finished reading this article?

18. Find time for your close friends

Life gets busy, we know, but it’s important to keep your relationships strong, particularly as you age. This recent study shows that having just one strong friendship is enough to stave off mental decline as we age.

19. Find or create moments of awe in your life

Studies show that experiencing moments of awe makes us moregenerous and patient, and helps you deal with stress better.

20. Prioritise positivity

This is a tried and tested hypothesis and it’s true: how you see the world impacts your mental wellbeing. Or put another way, your beliefs affect your emotional experiences. Why not try this little trick to bring some more positivity into your life?

21. Have a family meal

We know that being social is important, so family mealtime is a no brainer, we have to eat so why not do it together? But what you may not know is that eating together benefits your kids’ mental and physical health. So, try to prioritise at least one family meal per day where you put phones and distractions away and be present with each other!

22. Have a laugh at yourself

You might think that people who are self-deprecating have lower self-esteem, but this study shows it’s the opposite, and people who make fun of themselves are in fact happier and better socially adjusted.

23. Learn to forgive your mistakes and accept yourself

It’s one thing to practice positive self-talk, but why not take it even further and forgive yourself altogether and accept your faults. In this study, acceptance was the habit that was most strongly linked to life satisfaction.

24. Try yoga

Yoga is a mind-body practice that has risen in popularity over recent decades, and it has also recently been proven to help people with depression.

25. Get creative

Find a passion and get creative, you could try writing, dancing, acting, cooking, painting or any number of other creative pursuits. No matter what you choose, one thing is sure, being creative helps people deal with trauma and is helpful to both physical and mental wellbeing.

26. Have (a little bit of) chocolate

Studies into how eating chocolate impacts mood showed either an improvement in mood or a reduction of negative mood.

27. Get a dog

Having a dog has been proven to increase physical health — after all you have to take them for walks. But dogs are also good for mental health too. Studies show that owning a dog reduces a person’s risk of premature death by up to a third!

28. Be kind

Kindness increases happiness, energy, the love hormone (oxytocin), pleasure and it even increases your lifespan. It’s also really easy to practice and has recently started a global movement you can get involved in #RandomActsOfKindness

29. Attend a spiritual retreat

A study showed that people who attend spiritual retreats report greater psychological well-being and show retreats may increase levels of “feel-good” hormones in the brain.

30. Build your work friendships

Positive and warm relationships at work can make us feel happier and healthier, while also increasing productivity.

31. Take a break or limit overuse of social media

We’ve all heard the doomsday reports on the negative effects of social media. It turns out the key to social media is to be active in your use (not passive). When used actively to build or maintain social ties, social media can be a positive force, but beware of passively scrolling through feeds for hours — this can lead to liking yourself less and feeling envy. Also taking a week off can boosts well-being too. In the end, the research says to use social media wisely, deliberately and sparingly.

32. Take a moment to look at nature

On your way to work? Popping into the shops? Wherever you are, be sure to stop and smell the roses, or at least notice them. Research says that observing nature — wherever you may be — will make you feel happier.

33. Cook a new recipe for dinner

Cooking is a form of self-care and cooking for others is a way of nurturing people and sharing a meal is a great way to create deeper social bonds.

34. Practice loving kindness

Research has shown that helping others through acts of charity or volunteer work can make you feel better and happier, but more recent research finds that simply wishing someone well may have a similarly positive effect on our moods.

35. Get active

A study that examined data from almost 34,000 people has found that as little as one-hour of exercise per week, regardless of intensity, can help to prevent depression. So, get out there and something, anything, for just an hour and you can reap the benefits!

36. Give up smoking

Sorry smokers, I know it feels like everyone is ganging up on you, and I don’t have good news for you either. Research shows that giving up smoking is linked to greater happiness and elevated mood.

37. Get enough consistent sleep

Recent research has suggested sleep should be considered a major public health concern, and shows that the effects of a good night’s sleep are as beneficial for our happiness and well-being as winning the lottery might be!

38. Play some happy music

Music has not only been proven to help people with anxiety and depression, but it is also a major key to happiness, alleviating pain, keeping your brain healthy and improving mood.

39. Take control over your life

Developing greater control over your life can help you make important life decisions and feel less overwhelmed, stuck and lost. Read on for 7 ways to take control of your life.

40. Go for a hike in the mountains or a walk along the beach

Researchers have found that simply going for a leisurely walk can improve mood and boost subjective well-being, particularly for adults who are normally sedentary.

41. Go outside

The findings are in: the more green space in the neighbourhood, the happier people report feeling. Quite simply, if you want to feel better, just go outside.

42. Be generous

Research shows giving to others activates an area of the brain linked with contentment and the reward cycle. So, performing selfless acts makes you happier.

43. Get a cat

You either love ’em or hate ’em, but the benefits are clear, cats make our lives happier and healthier.

44. Join a choir or sing with friends

Music helps to synchronise our bodies and our brains, making it the perfect social glue. Participants in a sing-along reported feeling closer and more connected because of the experience of singing together.

45. Do some volunteer work

Research has shown that volunteering is rewarding in and of itself, and helping others is a way to higher individual wellbeing.

46. Set some goals and work to achieve them

Research shows that people who are making progress toward or are achieving meaningful goals are happier. Whether they’re health and fitness goals, or family goals, or work goals, the key is to be making progress.

47. Practice gratitude

In positive psychology research, gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships. One tip that has shown results is to keep a gratitude journal.

48. Forgive others

Forgiving others is a great way to let go of negativity. Follow this guide to work through the 9 steps to forgiving someone.

49. Have sex with someone you love

A number of studies have shown that sex is a key ingredient of a happy marriage — producing and ‘afterglow’ that can last up to two days.

50. Chasing happiness can have the opposite effect!

Beware chasing happiness for the sake of happiness. The above tips are all great activities you can pursue that have been proven to increase happiness and/or decrease negative moods and feelings. But it’s worth pointing out in our last tip that simply chasing happiness is not the way to find it.

Conclusion

The research shows that you can’t chase happiness, but you can fill your life with new and novel experiences, preferably shared with friends and family, that bring meaning to your life and the lives of others. If you can find the balance between the activities that you choose, and those you must do (often your day job), you might just succeed in finding happiness.

Ever wondered how to be happy? Are you looking for a few ideas or some inspiration to help reduce anxiety, cope with the stresses of modern life, or lift your mood? Here are 50 science-backed activities you can incorporate into your life that are proven to help you be happy.

Try one or try them all, try them once or make them a part of your daily, weekly or monthly habits.

But remember, as author Stephen Covey said, “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”

So, if you want to be happier or reduce stress, anxiety and negative emotions, pick a few of the below options that work for you, and schedule them into your diary to make them habits.

“Work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls—family, health, friends, integrity—are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered.”
Gary Keller

Share your tips for a happier life below! We’d love to hear them.

Don’t miss out! In 2020, we’ve got a jam-packed editorial calendar of science-backed content on topics like ‘the power of being bored’ and ‘the importance of finding ‘flow.’’ There will be reviews of books, research and talks in the positive psychology space, and we’ll be launching a new podcast called Happiness for Cynics. Don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss out!

TED’s top 11 positive psychology talks

05/01/2020 by Marie

Are you new to the field of positive psychology? Maybe you’re overwhelmed with all the content out there and not sure where to start?

It’s not surprising. Positive Psychology is a fairly new sub-field within the study of psychology. It is the study of happiness and looks at how people can live a more fulfilling, satisfying and meaningful life, and there has been an explosion of research and content over the past couple of decades.

To get you started on all you need to know, here’s a look at the best TED talks by some of the top positive psychology superstars around the world.

Martin Seligman: The new era of positive psychology (23:42), July 2008. Commonly known as the founder of Positive Psychology, Martin Seligman is a leading authority in the fields of Positive Psychology and resilience.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Flow, the secret to happiness (18:55), October 2008. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a Hungarian-American psychologist. He recognised and named the psychological concept of flow, a highly focused mental state conducive to productivity and happiness.
Dan Gilbert: The surprising science of happiness (21:16), September 2006. Dan Gilbert is an author and Harvard psychologist who says our beliefs about what will make us happy are often wrong.
Robert Waldinger: What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness (12:46), December 2015. Robert Waldinger is a Harvard psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, Zen priest and director of the longest study on adult life and happiness.
Carol Dweck: The Power of Believing That You Can Improve (10:24), November 2014. Stanford university psychologist Carol Dweck researches “growth mindset” — the idea that we can grow our brain’s capacity to learn and to solve problems verses having a ‘fixed mindset.’
Emily Esfahani Smith: There’s more to life than being happy (12:18), September 2017. Emily Esfahani Smith is a writer who draws on psychology, philosophy, and literature to write about the human experience—why we are the way we are and how we can find grace and meaning in a world that is full of suffering.
Brené Brown: The power of vulnerability (20:19), December 2010. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston where she studies courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy. She is the author of five #1 New York Times best sellers.
Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work (12:20), February 2012. Shawn Achor is an American author, and speaker known for his advocacy of positive psychology. He authored The Happiness Advantage and founded GoodThink, Inc.
Angela Lee Duckworth: Grit: The power of passion and perseverance (6:12), May 2013. Angela Duckworth is co-founder and CEO of Character Lab, a nonprofit that uses psychological science to help children thrive, and a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.
Adam Grant: The surprising habits of original thinkers (15:25), April 2016. Adam M. Grant is an American psychologist, author and professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania specializing in organizational psychology.
Susan David: The gift and power of emotional courage (16:48), January 2018. Susan David, Ph.D. a renowned psychologist and expert on emotions, happiness, and achievement, believes that one of the keys to a happy life is knowing yourself. She talks about recognising your feelings and understanding what they are really telling us.

Got a favourite Ted talk that’s not on this list? Share it below.

Don’t miss out!

In 2020, we’ve got a jam-packed editorial calendar of science-backed content on topics like ‘the power of being bored’ and ‘the importance of finding ‘flow.’’ There will be reviews of books and other resources in the positive psychology space, and we’ll be launching a new podcast called Happiness for Cynics. Don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss out!

How to make New Years’ resolutions you might actually keep

23/12/2019 by Marie

Have you ever set New Year’s resolutions but after a few days, weeks or months, forgotten all about them or let them drop because they’re too hard to maintain? You’re not alone.

According to research by the University of Scranton, only eight per cent of people actually achieve their New Year’s goals, with 80 per cent failing to keep their New Year’s resolutions altogether.

With such depressing stats, you might be thinking about giving-up on the whole institution altogether, right? No!

Goals are really important for mental health

“Happy people have more self-esteem, sense of control, optimism, and a sense of purpose derived from having goals,” says Michael Argyle, author of The Psychology of Happiness.

Setting goals you’ll keep

The first of January is only a random date in a calendar and there’s nothing that says you can’t set goals at any time of the year. But if you’re going to set New Year’s resolutions, you have to do the right thinking and planning before that day to set yourself up to succeed.

Here are some proven techniques you can implement to give yourself the best chance of succeeding…. And the best thing is that you can start this process at any time of year.

Commit to your goals. If you want to succeed, you must have input and take ownership for achieving your goals. Write them down and even tell a few people around you, this helps you to truly commit to your goals and leads to greater motivation.
Make them SMART goals. Being specific about what you want to achieve is critical. Your goals should be: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely (SMART). If your goal is to ‘lose weight’, instead try to define what that means, maybe it’s something like “I will only eat dessert on weekends and special occasions (birthdays or public holidays). On weekdays, I will make myself a cup of herbal tea to replace my mindless TV eating.”
Plan for incremental change. It’s not realistic to expect to be a marathon runner overnight if your usual level of activity only involves walking to the car and back. But if you plan for incremental change, over time, who knows what might happen? Remember it’s better to do 10 minutes of exercise a couple of times per week, instead of starting with 60 minutes of exercise five times per week then quitting. Start with small incremental actions that will lead to larger change over time. Once you’ve mastered the small steps, add more complexity or challenge to give you motivation when things get boring or too easy.
Aim for Goldilocks goals. Your goals shouldn’t be too easy or too hard. If your goal is too easy, you can easily lose motivation and give up. If it’s too hard or complex, it can be overwhelming. A goal that’s challenging but achievable is just right to keep you motivated throughout the year.
Be forgiving. If your goal is to write 3,000 words per week for your new novel, but you don’t achieve your goal that week, then forgive yourself and catch that up at the end. Don’t add more work to your following week as it will only add more stress and might lead you to give up altogether.

It’s about the journey, not the outcome

Goals will help you to set a path, but remember it’s about the journey, not the outcome. Enjoy the challenge and set your mind to a task or activity, but remember to be mindful and enjoy the moments. Otherwise, you may end up setting and achieving goals and always waiting for the achievement of the goal to bring happiness, and the next one and the next one.

Remember that having goals allows you to enjoy the process and take satisfaction in daily or small accomplishments along the way, it’s not only about achieving the goal.

If you’re looking for some inspiration for goals to set next year to be happier, have a read of this article on Three Habits of Positive People, and don’t forget to share your SMART New Year’s resolutions in the comments below!

What’s coming up in 2020?

In 2020, we’ve got a jam-packed editorial calendar of science-backed content on topics like ‘the power of being bored’ and ‘the importance of finding ‘flow.’’ There will be reviews of books and the top TedX talks in the positive psychology space, and we’ll be launching a new podcast called Happiness for Cynics!

Don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss out!

happy

Happiness is Contagious (E8)

Happiness for Cynics podcast

Transcription

Meet besties Marie and Pete

What is Flow and How to Find it (E5)

Happiness for Cynics podcast – episode 5

Transcription

Meet besties Marie and Pete

The Importance of Gratitude (E3)

Happiness for Cynics podcast – season 1, episode 3

Transcription

Meet besties Marie and Pete

What is Happiness? (E1)

Happiness for Cynics podcast – season 1, episode 1

Transcript

Meet besties Marie and Pete

How to Find Balance in Life

The key to Finding Balance and Living a Good Life

Meaning & Purpose

Community & Connection

Health & Wellbeing

How to be happy – 50 science-backed ways to improve your happiness

Are you looking for some ideas or inspiration to help reduce anxiety, build resiliency, cope with the stresses of modern life or lift your mood?

50 tips for how to be happy

Conclusion

TED’s top 11 positive psychology talks

How to make New Years’ resolutions you might actually keep

Goals are really important for mental health

Setting goals you’ll keep

It’s about the journey, not the outcome

What’s coming up in 2020?

About Marie

Podcast: Happiness for Cynics

Book: Self-care is church for non-believers

happy

Happiness for Cynics podcast

Transcription

Meet besties Marie and Pete

Happiness for Cynics podcast – episode 5

Transcription

Meet besties Marie and Pete

Happiness for Cynics podcast – season 1, episode 3

Transcription

Meet besties Marie and Pete

Happiness for Cynics podcast – season 1, episode 1

Transcript

Meet besties Marie and Pete

The key to Finding Balance and Living a Good Life

Meaning & Purpose

Community & Connection

Health & Wellbeing

Are you looking for some ideas or inspiration to help reduce anxiety, build resiliency, cope with the stresses of modern life or lift your mood?

50 tips for how to be happy

Conclusion

Goals are really important for mental health

Setting goals you’ll keep

It’s about the journey, not the outcome

What’s coming up in 2020?

Footer

About Marie

Podcast: Happiness for Cynics

Book: Self-care is church for non-believers