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Psychological tips aren’t enough – policies need to address structural inequities so everyone can flourish

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Sarah S. Willen, University of Connecticut; Abigail Fisher Williamson, Trinity College, and Colleen Walsh, Cleveland State University

“Languishing” is the in-vogue term for today’s widely shared sense of pandemic malaise. According to some psychologists, you can stop languishing with simple steps: Savor the small stuff. Do five good deeds. Find activities that let you “flow.” Change how you think and what you do, and today’s languishing can become tomorrow’s flourishing.

But in an unjust world burdened by concurrent threats – war, a pandemic, the slow burn of climate change – does this argument ring true? Can simple activities like these really help us – all of us – flourish?

As social scientists who study flourishing and health, we have watched this psychological approach capture attention – and massive investment. Most of this work is rooted in positive psychology, a fast-growing field that sees individuals as largely responsible for their own flourishing. This new research, most of it survey-based, aims to revamp health and social policy, nationally and globally. It may well succeed at this — which has us concerned.

What could be wrong with a worldwide effort to help people flourish? Our concern is that a narrowly psychological approach overestimates individuals’ control over their own well-being, while underestimating the role of systemic inequities, including those that well-designed laws and policies can help address.

Here’s what people told us affected flourishing

As researchers who combine surveys with interviews, we know that thousands of data points can tell us many things – but not the stuff you learn from sitting down with people to talk, and listen.

In a new paper based on our collaborative research, we asked open-ended questions that surveys cannot answer. Not just, “Are you flourishing?,” but also: “Why, or why not? What helps you flourish? What gets in the way?”

We took our questions to public libraries and private boardrooms, coffee shops and kitchen tables throughout Greater Cleveland, Ohio, speaking with 170 people from different backgrounds: men and women, rich and poor, liberal and conservative, Black, white and Latino. Would their answers align, we wondered? Would they mesh with the experts’?

In one area, our interviewees’ perspectives line up with leading survey research: For over 70%, social connections had a powerful impact on whether they felt they were flourishing. But other topics people raised are ignored in most leading studies of flourishing.

For instance, a full 70% mentioned a stable income. Nearly as many flagged what public health professionals call the social determinants of health – reliable access to things like healthy food, transportation, education and a safe place to live. Some also cited discrimination, unequal treatment by the police, and other factors described as structural determinants of health.

Poverty, inequity and racism get in the way

For people who face inequity in their own lives, the links between adversity and flourishing were crystal clear.

Over half of interviewees described themselves as flourishing. But less than half of those earning $30,000 or less annually were flourishing, compared to almost 90% of those with household incomes over $100,000. More than two-thirds of white interviewees were flourishing versus less than half of Black interviewees. And nearly three-quarters of people with a bachelor’s degree were flourishing, compared to just over half of those without.

A Latina woman we interviewed explained how poverty and other forms of structural vulnerability can impair flourishing: “If you have a home that’s infested with roaches, and mold, and lead, and water, then after you’ve worked so hard, you come home and just want to rest. And then you’re like oh, I don’t have food, and you didn’t want to cook … then you’re eating unhealthy.”

She described how all these factors affect relationships too: “You’re not being a good mom because you’re angry. … You cannot give 100% at home. … You cannot give 100% to work, and you cannot give 100% to social life, and you have no friends because you’re so angry nobody wants to talk to you.”

Other interviewees told us how entrenched racism obstructs flourishing. One Black woman described racism’s grinding toll as “exhausting” and “such a heavy lift every day.” She compared it to a game of chess requiring “strategies all day long.” The constant vigilance and pressure she described fit what health researchers call weathering, or premature deterioration in health.

Under circumstances like these, would savoring the small things and doing good deeds really help?

To us, the answer is clear: Without the conditions that enable flourishing, psychological exercises will inevitably fall short. More importantly, they risk leaving behind those already facing adversity and injustice.

Collective flourishing requires structural change

The path to flourishing is no simple issue of mind over matter. It also depends on society’s systems and structures: Safe, affordable housing. A living wage. Solutions to systemic racism. Affordable, quality food and health care, including mental health care. As decades of public health research have shown, factors like these deeply affect health and well-being. We contend that flourishing research and policy need to consider these factors as well.

Author Sarah Willen discusses flourishing on the Social Science & Medicine – Mental Health video podcast.

There’s nothing wrong with taking concrete steps to cultivate kindness, gratitude and connections with others. To the contrary, these are great ways to improve mental health and strengthen social solidarity. But tips like these are probably most helpful to people whose lives and livelihoods are already secure. For those who struggle to meet their basic needs and those of their loved ones, it will take a lot more than simple activities to flourish. It will take structural change.

“Hostile environments thwart flourishing; congenial environments promote it,” as disability justice scholar Rosemary Garland-Thomson puts it. Unless political leaders are willing to tackle the root causes of social inequities, chances of flourishing inevitably will be unequal.

Positive psychologists tend to see flourishing as a psychological matter, separate from social and political conditions. Our interviewees tell a different story. Policy proposals that ignore real-world perspectives like theirs risk leading policymakers astray.

[Over 150,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world. Sign up today.]

Ancient views of flourishing may help forge a path forward. For Aristotle, flourishing is not just about happiness or satisfaction – it involves achieving your potential. In his view, this responsibility lies in one’s own hands. But modern public health research shows that the ability to achieve your potential depends heavily on the circumstances in which you are born, grow and live.

In hostile environments – of exclusion and oppression, scarcity and risk, war and forcible displacement – no one can flourish. Unless all of us – citizens, policymakers and researchers alike – are prepared to confront the root causes of today’s hostile environments, efforts to promote flourishing will inevitably miss the mark.

Sarah S. Willen, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Research Program on Global Health & Human Rights at the Human Rights Institute, University of Connecticut; Abigail Fisher Williamson, Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Policy and Law, Trinity College, and Colleen Walsh, Associate Professor of Health Sciences, Cleveland State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Want to learn more about the science of happiness? Make sure to subscribe to my podcast Happiness for Cynicsand weekly email newsletter for regular updates and news! 

Wellbeing Centres… hippie communes or paths to happiness?  Interview with Diana Stobo  

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For cynics around the world, wellbeing retreats top the list of things of which to be sceptical. Conjuring images of fit and tanned, green-smoothie-drinking, yoga-pant-wearing health and fitness buffs or meditating hippies in sustainably sourced clothing and bare feet, it’s easy to simply dismiss wellbeing retreats as a fad for rich people or the fringes of society. 

It turns out, nothing is further from the truth. Research shows that consumers care deeply about wellness, with the market exploding in recent years. Global consulting firm, McKinsey, showed that 79 per cent of survey respondents across in six countries believe that wellness is important, and 42 per cent consider it a top priority. Over the past few years, people around the world have shown a substantial increase in the prioritisation of wellness. 

McKinsey estimates the global wellness market is valued at more than $1.5 trillion, with annual growth of 5 to 10 percent, and when it comes to wellness centres and retreats, Wellness Creative Co. estimates the wellness tourism market is projected to reach $919 billion by 2022.  

That’s why I recently sat down with celebrity chef, best-selling author, and health and wellness life-coach, Diana Stobo. Here’s our interview. 

Q: You have such a varied career in the wellness industry, and I’m interested to know what drew you to this industry and field of work?  

Diana: Ha, ha. You know, I don’t think anything drew me there. I think it was serendipitous. Honestly, I think you fall into it. When I wrote my first book, which has not been published, the first sentence was, “everything that I’ve done has led me to here.” 

I think that’s what we can all do. We can look back and go, “How did I get here?” And then you look at the things that you’ve done, the things that you’ve accomplished and what your life, the turmoils, the ups and downs, the adversity, and it all leads you to where you’re going. You can’t plan that. It just happens. You know that saying: we plan our lives and God laughs.  

I think, I think God was laughing the whole time as I was writing my books. You know, I have a girlfriend who told me once it was it was fantastic because I actually felt what she was saying when I went through my divorce was, I feel like my soul is driving the car and I’m a passenger. And I keep saying turn left, turn left and my soul’s ‘ha, ha, turn right’, you know? 

Or you say, stop, stop! And your soul runs through the light and you’re like, wow, the soul is doing something completely different than you had planned. And that’s, that’s how I got here.  

Q: Surely along the way, you’re loving what you’re doing. Is that fair to say? Because you’re so successful at it. 

Diana: One hundred percent, one hundred percent. Every single day I wake up and I go, if I wasn’t doing what I’m doing, what would I be doing? I don’t know. But I do pick and choose the parts that fulfil me. There are parts of what I do that I don’t love. You have to do it to get through. But I’ve learned to find people who can do it, and also let go of the outcome of you know, the control and just let people flourish in their own way, which is really great. Which is why I have such an amazing staff, because I read something once with Southwest Airlines. I don’t know if you know Southwest Airlines in Australia, but it’s “the friendly skies”, right?  

So, it’s an airline that’s basically… they tell jokes, and people can wear what they want. It’s super relaxed and the guy who put it together, he said, “We teach people, we show them the protocols, and then we say, but you can break them if it benefits the client.” And that’s the part that I love, you know. I have my staff be all that they are, you know, I let them become whoever they are yet stay within the confines of what the program is.  

And that’s probably how I live my life, honestly.  

Q: Today we’re here to talk primarily about wellbeing retreats or wellbeing centres, and I’ll get to that in a second. But I’d like to ask a sneaky question, off topic, because you’re also one of the original pioneers of the raw food movement, a leading raw food chef, health and wellness educator and the founder and CEO of Truth Bar. And I have to ask, what is it about how humans are eating today that needs fixing? What’s wrong with what we’re doing today?  

Diana: I know that when I went through menopause just recently a few years back, I started to put on weight again, and everything that I know and everything that I taught myself and everything that I teach went out the window when I started Googling. I started Googling, “What do you do with menopause?” And everything went down to supplements and ridiculous fad diets. And I got really confused, I really did. I thought maybe what I teach and what I know doesn’t work for me anymore, because I’m a new person because now I’ve got no hormones. So maybe, maybe I have to restructure everything. And so, I played the game for about two years, and honestly, I got fatter and fatter and fatter. It was really uncomfortable. And I got sicker and sicker, and so I just went back to what I know, and it worked.  

So, I think that there’s so much information that people get obsessed with the information and then they don’t know what’s real, what’s not real. You know, we first were taught to read packages, but if you’re reading a package, you shouldn’t be eating it, period.  

End of story, you know there’s so many things I can say about food. I can talk about food for six hours, get me on another podcast because food is such an important thing. 

And now at my hotel, The Retreat Costa Rica, we have an innovative doctor, and the reason I chose that is because everything is about nature and they’ll tell you the number one most important thing is what you eat. Number one. People think it’s, ‘I gotta work out more’ or it’s psychological. Everybody tries to pin something on their disease or dysfunction, but number one, the most important thing is what you put in your body.  

You are what you eat, and I don’t think that was ever taught to any of us. It certainly wasn’t taught to me. I mean, my mom used to have TV dinners when we were kids, and we would watch the wonderful World of Disney while eating something in a tin can that she heated up in the oven.  

I hope no one uses microwaves anymore. But microwaves… you shouldn’t even be in a room where a microwave is running because the radiation that it emits is huge. So, I don’t know. It’s almost like we have to relearn everything that we didn’t learn. And we love convenience, just like we love technology. But none of it’s good for us. None of it’s good for us.  

I really think that what we’re going through right now is… knock on wood…. It’s the beginning of something exceptional. It looks like despair right now and destruction. But I’m hoping that the storm will pass and everything will be washed away and we can look at life in a different perspective. I truly believe that we’re going to look at our history books differently. Everything is going to be different. And so, we have to be positive. Take care of ourselves. Remain healthy, happy, most importantly, and then we’ll see what unfolds. But don’t get obsessed with what’s going on.  

Q: A lot of us have been conditioned to be sceptical of wellness centres. Can you help bust the myths and for people, myself included, who have never been to a wellness retreat, can you explain a bit about what it is? And why it’s important for someone to spend money on a wellness retreat for a week versus going to Vegas?  

Diana: Well, that’s a fantastic juxtaposition. Wellness retreat or Vegas? Well, let’s just point out the basic stuff. You know, food and drink. That’s the first thing. When we go on vacation… it’s really funny, my brother just came to visit and he was eating a lot, and I said, you know, “slow your roll, dude. You’re a 57-year-old man. Really, do you really need to get a scoop of ice cream at three o’clock in the afternoon? I mean that should just be off limits until we’re grandparents, you know what I’m saying?” 

And he says, “Hey, I’m on vacation. I’m on vacation!” And that’s such a mentality that we go on vacation to destroy all the work we’ve done on ourselves. So just think of it in terms of going to a wellness place where you know that you’re only going to get the finest things to put in your body. Okay, we all go on a vacation or, let’s say Vegas, since you use that one. We go and we need to work out, right? So, we go to the gym and we take a yoga class or we walk up The Strip or something, and we try to find [one] and it’s hectic because it’s too hot out. We’re not really here, we’re rushing to get to a class.  

But you go to a wellness retreat and everything is available there for you at any given time. And whether you’re walking in nature or stretching on the yoga mats or going to the gym or getting a treatment massage, you get to choose. There’s no rush. There’s no anxiety. There’s no stress. There’s no ‘shoulds.’ There’s no ‘should nots.’ It’s all there. You can’t make a mistake at a wellness retreat. You can’t eat the wrong foods. You can’t drink too much. You can’t… I mean, there’s just nothing for you to do wrong. And if you do drink too much, you’re going to get a green juice in the morning that’s going to cure it all!  

So as far as all the “woo woo” and the meditation and all that, I actually break it down really simply. The Retreat Costa Rica is very unique that way. So, everything is very light, white. So, it’s like a blank canvas, and you get to paint the world you want. There are people who go and sit by the pool and read all day. They don’t attend anything. They go get a treatment. That’s the, that’s the idea of wellness is becoming who you really are, allowing yourself to unfold and discover yourself. When you’re on an agenda and drinking and eating things that you shouldn’t be doing. You’re just clogging your system. You can’t flow.  

So, why spend the money to go to a retreat rather than to Vegas? Because you want to feel good. That’s really it. I think a lot of people get wrapped up in the program and they go, I gotta do this, I gotta do this. I got to do that. And then, day three, they surrender. They’re like, you know what, I’m just going to go with the flow, and that’s, that’s where the healing happens. It really does. And I tell people, they’re like, “I gotta go, I gotta go, I gotta get to yoga!” and I go “No, you don’t.” If you don’t want to go and you’re in a conversation, having connection with another guest and being in conversation is part of your process. So, sit, relax, heal. It’s all different. You know, it depends. Every place is different, but that’s what it’s like at the retreat.  

Q: So, what would a typical week look like for your guests?  

Diana: The typical week? Well, I think it’s really important to see the biorhythms. Like I said, a lot of people come in there with no expectations. I think the retreat is very unique. It calls to a lot of people, and they don’t know what they want when they get there. 

I see this time and time again. I don’t know if that’s true for every place, but because it’s laid out with such a clean agenda, it’s not a lot of rushing around. But a lot of people come in and go, “Okay, well, I want to go to the Volcano, I want to go to the beach, I want to make sure I have lunch. And what kind of… I want to juice this day. I want to do this. And they lay it down and they go to the front reception. And I’m telling you, they’re doing all the classes. They’re doing all their program. They’re doing it all, but they’re like trying to figure out how they can fit more in. Because they’re in Costa Rica and they want to fit it in.  

So, they go to the receptionist. And of course, they’re like, can you book this? Can you book this? Can you book this? Come day three, you know, they’re like, did you book those things for me? Oh, maybe you can take that off. 

In day four, they get up and they go straight to the reception and they say, “Cancel it all, I’m not leaving here.” The day starts, six am, seven am, whatever. It’s an open kitchen. So, people come in, they get their coffee, their tea, their elixirs, whatever makes them happy, their green juices.  

They go to yoga. Yoga is … an eight o’clock class for an hour, hour and a half, and it ranges, all the different flows so people can get a nice blood moving. And then there’s breakfast. And then there’s a hike, and then there’s open spa. There are two pools, two restaurants, and then, of course, there’s lunch.  

And then there’s another yoga. And then there’s sunset and then treatments in between and meeting with people. And another thing that happens is people come in they’re like, “I was wondering what I was going to do all day.” Then at the end, they’re like, “where did the day go?” Because it’s not very often that we take care of ourselves and just allow the day to unfold naturally. 

Q: What I’m hearing from you is that the first few days they’re still working like they’re at work. And in that constant busy mode that we like to be in and put ourselves in, how do we take the lessons from a wellness centre and apply them back into our day to day lives? When you know the kid’s school’s calling and they’re sick, and your boss needs something by deadline and your parents are coming for a trip to visit and all of, you know, all of the stuff. What would your tips be for your guests?  

Diana: Well, everybody is different, and some people take a lot from it. And some people just can’t surrender. They just can’t open their mind to a new way of life. They enjoyed it. Thank you very much. I’ll be back. But some people have… I would say a good portion of people have profound shifts.  

And what I think is… there’s the eating component. There’s the relaxation component. There’s the exercise component. There’s the spiritual component. And even if they take just a small portion of it back home with them, the next time they come, they’ll take another portion and they’ll take another portion. And that’s why people get addicted to these wellness retreats because they find their purpose. They find their meaning in life. They discover their soul. And in the rat race you don’t have time for that. So, it’s sometimes, it’s a shift, and it changes people immediately because they’re probably ready and on the precipice of change and then other people, it’s a slow burn.  

But everybody, everybody learns something. I mean, I can give you stories of people who I think probably will never learn anything, ever as long as they live. 

I had this great Buddhist teacher and he said, you know, he used to say it about somebody I knew. And he said “they’re evolving at the pace of a rock.” And, if you think about that, you’re like yeah, rocks do evolve. They just take a long time, right?  

Then there’s other people who are shifting like feathers in the wind. And so, everybody is different. But that’s how it happened for me. I became a wellness junkie because I started going when my kids were young. I would go for one week, and every time I came back, I felt like a new person. I thought, That’s the life I want for me. So, it took a while, took many years and a lot of visits to wellness retreats to find that.

Q: So, I assume, and I’m hearing that you practise a lot of what you preach at your own wellness centres. Can you tell me how these things have impacted you and your family’s lives? So what, what were those incremental changes that you started seeing and personally, what works for you?  

Well, I think saying no. I always I always tell people say yes to the universe, but you have to say no to the people asking for favours. Because that’s not the universe. That’s just, you know, people… say no and make more time for yourself. Time management I think is really important. That was the beginning.  

I think the physical part was work out less. You know, don’t work so hard on working out, like, actually find the… because I used to work out so much till my body hurt. And I don’t like doing that anymore. I think it actually creates too much acid in my body and long-term inflammation, etcetera, etcetera, that I learned to be more gentle.  

Food, I mean, my expertise is food and understanding food understanding more importantly what it does to your body, like we just we think about the internal, we eat it and then it comes out the other end, right? But what does it do? What does it do when it goes inside? And I love biology. I was a pre-med, I love physiology. I understand the body and how things work. I just never put two and two together. Never, I never thought about what I eat and where it goes and what it’s doing when it enters your body. And once you learn that you can’t go back, you would never put anything you know, icky into your body ever again.  

Little by little by little, you know, for some people, like they come, they go. You know, the one thing I love about the retreat is they always have a warm soup as an appetiser every night for dinner. And people actually get… They want it, they crave it, they can’t wait to have it. And so, the one thing I want to take home with me is I’m going to make soup every night. Okay.  

Have you ever seen the wheel of life? You use it for coaching, right? It’s a life coach tool, and you’ve got your, you’ve got your family, career, exercise, food, your livelihood, your finance. And that’s basically it. What parts of your life are empty that you need to fulfil? Yeah, focus on those first.  

Q: On that note, you did mention saying yes to the universe before. So, what’s next for you? 

Diana: Well, next Tuesday, I turn 57. I’m getting tired. I gotta say, I’m getting tired of the hustle. But what I built what I started to build 8 to 10 years ago is now still being nurtured.  

I mean, the Retreat, knock on wood again, is doing well. And I think that the after the storm that we went through and we’re growing, and so that is a project that’s still growing. We just added six rooms. We’re going to add 10 more rooms. And hopefully we’re creating a village, a community of wellness there. And then I have another company. Have another company is called Truth Bar. It’s a gut health bar, so I focus on the gut health and really bringing that to the surface so people can actually heal themselves with candy bars you know, functional food. 

For me, I just moved across country to another state. And, you know, I’m kind of I’m excited about settling and maybe having a little bit of a social life again. Because I’ve been working so hard for so long that I really want to connect and have deep relationships and spend some time with the people I love. And it’s hard. It is hard. I mean, I didn’t do it over the last two years, all the stuff we’ve been going through, and it really put an emphasis on how important all those people are. 

About Diana Stobo

The Retreat Costa Rica is the innovation of celebrity chef, best-selling author, and health and wellness life-coach, Diana Stobo. Her goal was to create a transformational wellness center that has since become a distinctively Costa Rican experience of “Heaven on Earth” — a resort and spa where guests experience a harmony of nature, nutrition, and wellness nestled among the lush vegetation of the rainforest. 

Want to learn more about the science of happiness? Make sure to subscribe to my podcast Happiness for Cynics and weekly email newsletter for regular updates and news!   

  

  

Embodied awareness – checking-in with your own body for signs of stress and trauma 

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What is embodied awareness? 

It’s easy when life is busy and stressful to get caught up in our heads, becoming stressed, worried or anxious. Yet, despite traditional Western medical thinking (which is slowly changing) our minds and bodies are inexorably connected. What impacts our minds also impacts our bodies, and vice-versa. Yet in our modern world, we can sometimes spend far too much time in our heads and not enough time connecting with our bodies. 

As many people who practice mindfulness or meditation have found, making time in your life to stop and focus can have many beneficial impacts on our lives, such as lowering levels of stress, improving heart function and blood pressure, calming the mind to reduce anxiety and increasing levels of happiness. Yet, we’re increasingly trained to identify the mental and emotional impacts of stress and low mental resilience… we’re surprisingly not so good at recognising the physical impacts. 

Have you ever had someone tell you to lower your shoulders, only to realise when you do that your shoulders were up around your ears? That’s embodied awareness – being aware of how your body is responding to stress. It’s likely that you were holding onto a lot of stress in your shoulders and neck, but you were so ‘in your head’ that you hadn’t checked in with the impact of that stress on your physical body. It’s about understanding and letting go of the physical stress and trauma. 

In this way, embodied awareness could be seen as a natural extension of the psychological intervention called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), in which a trained professional helps you to accept your thoughts (the good and the bad) rather than trying to change them. This intervention teaches people that it’s OK to feel what you feel, without judgement. It has been shown to help with first identifying and then processing thoughts and emotions. Through embodied awareness, you take this self-awareness one step further and reconnect with your body too, bringing awareness to both your body and mind.  

“As a process, Embodied Self Awareness respects the unity of our body-mind experience and endeavours to embrace our innate self-healing capacity. This transformative self-healing approach brings attention to how and where depression, anxiety, trauma, stress, and chronic health conditions are being experienced and maintained within the body-mind relationship, and how distress can be alleviated,” says Christina Manfredi, clinical psychotherapist and counsellor at Transpersonal and Shamanic Psychotherapy & Counselling Australia.  

Questions to help you reconnect with your body 

So, how do you do this? It’s important to remember that sometimes we all need extra help. If you need to see a professional, see a professional.  

If you’re comfortable managing a low level of stress, anxiety or trauma and want to understand how this is presenting in your physical body, simply asking yourself the right questions can help. The following 10 questions are adapted from embodied awareness expert Dr. Alan Fogel’s recent article in Psychology Today:  

  1. Are you aware of your own body sensations, stress or calm or emotional feelings during school, work, housekeeping, childcare, etc.? 
  1. What are your levels of muscle tension like? Do you grip the steering wheel tighter than necessary, stretch your neck forward when trying to read a computer screen, hold yourself rigidly at attention when other people are around, or clench your jaw? 
  1. Throughout the day, do you change your movement or posture to alleviate the tension in your body, or do you just keep going, moving, talking, working, and ignoring your body state? 
  1. When you feel tired or achy, do you know what happened to lead to this state? Can you feel what your body needs in these states? 
  1. Do you ever stop thinking and doing and just take time to feel yourself? 
  1. Do you practice/receive any type of leisure activity that calls for embodied self-awareness such as yoga, massage, bodywork, meditation, dance, arts and crafts, music, sports, etc.? Do you practice this with the intention to expand self-awareness and relaxation, or are you caught up in “doing” it, trying to achieve a goal, or thinking about something else the whole time? 
  1. Do you ever stop to smell the roses, engage in open-ended play with a child or a companion animal, indulge in prayer, walk in nature with all your senses alert, share non-demanding touch with someone you love, take a hot bath, or go to a spa with no agenda except to relax? 
  1. Do you ask for help when you need it, or think that you have to do it yourself? 
  1. If you ever suffered a serious injury, accident, were a crime, refugee, or abuse victim, been in a natural disaster or at war, suffered from racism sexual harassment or abuse, have you ever done trauma therapy to deal with the emotional aftermath? 
  1. Can you talk about your emotions easily, or do you push them aside? 

Why not take 10 minutes out of your day to truly read and answer the questions above? 

Additional reading: 

  • Albahari M. (2009).  Witness Consciousness: It’s Definition, Appearance and Reality Journal of Consciousness Studies, 16 (1), 62-84. 
  • Bainbridge Cohen, B. (2008). Sensing, Feeling, and Action: The Experiential Anatomy of Body-Mind Centering. Northampton, MA: Contract Editions. 
  • Fogel, A. (2009). The Psychophysiology of Self Awareness: Rediscovering the Lost Art of Body Sense. New York: Norton & Company. 

Want to learn more about the science of happiness? Make sure to subscribe to my podcast Happiness for Cynics and weekly email newsletter for regular updates and news!  

6 studies that prove being outdoors improves mood and wellbeing

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What’s the link between your mental health and nature? 

Most of us know that getting out into nature is good for your health, but to what extent? Is it just a relaxing pastime or is there more to it? An increasing body of research is showing beyond a doubt that getting out into nature, going for walks in the forest, sitting in a park, stopping to smell the roses, planting a garden, and participating in any outdoor activity is linked to higher happiness levels (World Economic Forum). This also extends to greater bird diversity in our local environment. 

Since the rise of Covid, another more surprising line of research has also shown insight into why our mental health has suffered. Over the past few years, researchers have increasingly been focused on exploring and determining what impacts nature has on our mental health… and the results are not great for city dwellers. 

In this article, we explore 6 studies that show the many benefits of nature, and how they can lead to a happier, healthier life. Read on! 

Being around birds linked to higher happiness levels (World Economic Forum). Greater bird biodiversity can make people more joyful, according to a study published in Ecological Economics. The happiest Europeans are those who see the most bird species in their day-to-day life. The authors calculated that being around 14 additional bird species provided as much satisfaction as earning an additional $150 a month. 

Green Space Around Primary Schools May Improve Students’ Academic Performance (The Conversation). Greenery around primary schools may improve students’ academic performance, while traffic pollution may be detrimental, our study shows.   

Spending Time Outdoors Has a Positive Effect on Our Brains (Neuroscience News). Brain structure and mood improve when people spend time outdoors. This has positive implications for concentration, memory, and overall psychological wellbeing.  

The Built Environment Impacts Our Health and Happiness More Than We Know (Arch Daily). The built environment is directly linked with happiness and well-being, and too often urban environments fail to put people at ease.  

Nature-Based Activities Can Improve Mood and Reduce Anxiety (Neuroscience News). Participating in nature-based activities including exercise, gardening, and conservation, helps improve mood and reduce anxiety for those with mental health problems.  

Birds and Bees ‘Secret Weapons’ to Raising Happiness Levels (Belfast Telegraph). Studies show that increasing people’s connection with nature boosts happiness.  

Want to learn more about the science of happiness? Make sure to subscribe to my podcast Happiness for Cynics and weekly email newsletter for regular updates and news!  

The World Happiness Report 2022 – happiness is about benevolence and trust  

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About the World Happiness Report 2022 

On 19 July 2011, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted Resolution 65/309, “Happiness: Towards a holistic approach to development.” This resolution called on national governments to “give more importance to happiness and wellbeing in determining how to achieve and measure social and economic development.” 

The following year, the first World Happiness Report was released. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the report, which is released every year around March 20th to align with International Day of Happiness celebrations.  

“A decade ago, governments around the world expressed the desire to put happiness at the heart of the global development agenda, and they adopted a UN General Assembly resolution for that purpose. The World Happiness Report grew out of that worldwide determination to find the path to greater global well-being. Now, at a time of pandemic and war, we need such an effort more than ever. And the lesson of the World Happiness Report over the years is that social support, generosity to one another, and honesty in government are crucial for well-being. World leaders should take heed. Politics should be directed as the great sages long ago insisted: to the well-being of the people, not the power of the rulers,” said report co-author Jeffrey Sachs about the origin and purpose of the report. 

The report uses global survey data to report how people evaluate their own lives in more than 150 countries worldwide. The report authors then assess the extent to which six key variables contribute to explaining life evaluations: GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity and corruption. 

The World Happiness Report 2022 – benevolence and trust  

The World Happiness Report 2022 reveals a bright light in dark times. The pandemic brought not only pain and suffering but also an increase in social support and benevolence. As we battle the ills of disease and war, it is essential to remember the universal desire for happiness and the capacity of individuals to rally to each other’s support in times of great need. 

Past reports have looked at the links between people’s trust in government and institutions with happiness. The findings demonstrate that communities with high levels of trust are happier and more resilient in the face of a wide range of crises. 

This year’s report, which comes yet again in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, also focused on benevolence. “COVID-19 is the biggest health crisis we’ve seen in more than a century,” said co-author John Helliwell. “Now that we have two years of evidence, we are able to assess not just the importance of benevolence and trust, but to see how they have contributed to well-being during the pandemic.” 

A central finding in this year’s report continues to be the extent to which the quality of the social context, especially the extent to which people trust their governments and have trust in the benevolence of others, leads to higher happiness levels. This supported and maintained people’s happiness before and during the pandemic, and the report authors believe this will continue to support people’s happiness after the pandemic.  

Countries where people trusted their governments and each other experienced lower COVID-19 death tolls and set the stage for maintaining or rebuilding a sense of common purpose to deliver happier, healthier and more sustainable lives. This forward-looking part permits an optimistic tinge based on the remarkable growth in prosocial activities during 2021. 

“We found during 2021 remarkable worldwide growth in all three acts of kindness monitored in the Gallup World Poll. Helping strangers, volunteering, and donations in 2021 were strongly up in every part of the world, reaching levels almost 25% above their pre-pandemic prevalence. This surge of benevolence, which was especially great for the helping of strangers, provides powerful evidence that people respond to help others in need, creating in the process more happiness for the beneficiaries, good examples for others to follow, and better lives for themselves,” said Helliwell. 

The happiest countries in the world 

For the fifth year in a row, Finland took the number one spot as the happiest country in the world – significantly expanding its lead ahead of other countries in the top ten. Denmark was second and Iceland moved to third from fourth while Switzerland dropped to fourth. The list is rounded out by the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Sweden, Norway, Israel and New Zealand.  

  1. Finland (7.821) 
  1. Denmark (7.636) 
  1. Iceland (7.557) 
  1. Switzerland (7.512) 
  1. Netherlands (7.415) 
  1. Luxembourg (7.404) 
  1. Sweden (7.384) 
  1. Norway (7.365) 
  1. Israel (7.364) 
  1. New Zealand (7.200) 

The next five are Austria, Australia, Ireland, Germany and Canada. This marks a substantial fall for Canada, which was 5th ten years ago. Overall, the three countries with the biggest gains were Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania. The biggest losses were in Lebanon, Venezuela, and Afghanistan. 

Co-author Jan-Emmanuel De Neve said, “At the very bottom of the ranking we find societies that suffer from conflict and extreme poverty, notably we find that people in Afghanistan evaluate the quality of their own lives as merely 2.4 out of 10. This presents a stark reminder of the material and immaterial damage that war does to its many victims and the fundamental importance of peace and stability for human wellbeing.” 

Read the full report: World Happiness Report 2022 

Want to learn more about the science of happiness? Make sure to subscribe to the Happiness for Cynics podcast and our weekly email newsletter for regular updates and news!  

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

The wholebeing approach – Interview with Tal Ben-Shahar (E105)

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Happiness for Cynics podcast

Join Marie this week as she interviews happiness advocate Tal Ben-Shahar who shares his insights on happiness and the wholebeing approach. 

Transcript

[Happy intro music -background] 

M: Welcome to happiness for cynics and thanks for joining us as we explore all the things I wish I’d known earlier in life but didn’t. 

P: This podcast is about how to live the good life. Whether we’re talking about a new study or the latest news or eastern philosophy, our show is all about discovering what makes people happy. 

M: So, if you’re like me and you want more out of life, listen in and more importantly, buy in because I guarantee if you do, the science of happiness can change your life. 

P: Plus, sometimes I think we’re kind of funny. 

[Intro music fadeout] 

Marie: Welcome back to our show, I am so excited about our guest. Tal Ben-Shahar is an author and lecturer.  He taught two of the largest classes in Harvard University’s history, “Positive Psychology” and “The Psychology of Leadership.”  His books have been translated into more than thirty languages, and have appeared on best-seller lists around the world.  His latest books are “Happiness Studies” and “Happier, No Matter What.” 

Tal consults and lectures to executives in multi-national corporations, the general public, and at-risk populations.  The topics he lectures on include leadership, education, ethics, politics, happiness, self-esteem, resilience, goal setting, and mindfulness.  He is the co-founder and chief learning officer of The Happiness Studies Academy and Potentialife. 

An avid sportsman, Tal won the U.S. Intercollegiate and Israeli National squash championships.  He obtained his PhD in Organizational Behaviour and BA in Philosophy and Psychology from Harvard. 

Tal Ben-Shahar: Hi.

Marie: Hello. How are you?

Tal Ben-Shahar: I’m doing okay, thank you. How are you?

Marie: Good. Thank you so much for joining us on the Happiness for Cynics podcast. We’ll get right into it. I’ve been a fan, a huge fan of your work, and you’ve definitely been instrumental in the positive psychology movement and all the way back in 2007 when you published Happier, which went on to become a New York Times bestseller. In the preface you wrote,

“People are sensing and have been sensing for a while that we’re in the midst of some sort of revolution, and they’re not sure why.” [Happier – Tal Ben-Shahar]

So that was almost 15 years ago. And unfortunately for many people, the study of positive psychology hasn’t revolutionised their lives, and it seems to have remained the world’s best kept secret. So, I’m wondering, why do you think the science of happiness and wellbeing hasn’t had a bigger impact on humanity yet?

Tal Ben-Shahar: Thank you, Marie. First of all, for having me here, and second for the question because it is an important one. You know, when you look at change, the way it happens is usually that it’s slow, slow, slow and then very fast. In other words, at some point there is… it tips, as, as Malcolm Gladwell puts it, it hasn’t tipped yet for the science of happiness.

However, I think we’ve gone through at least a few of the slow, slow, slow, which gets us closer to the very fast. And unfortunately, it seems like things need to get worse before they get better. And what the pandemic has done is it has made things worse in terms of mental health, whether it’s stress and anxiety, whether it’s depression and what we’re beginning to see. And I can certainly feel, there is much more interest, whether it’s from politicians or teachers, parents, businesses, much more interest in the field. So, I suspect that we’re getting a lot closer to that tipping point.

Marie: I hope so. As you can probably tell from the title of this podcast. I was a cynic for so many years. I saw the T-shirt slogans and I didn’t understand the science behind it, and it’s been revolutionary in my life, and I just I want to scream from the rooftops to everyone else. “This stuff matters and it makes a difference!”

So, what do you think, as we’re reaching this tipping point, will need to happen in the next few years for us to pick up the speed of adoption and buy in from people?

Tal Ben-Shahar: Yes. So, the key is really to connect this field to tie it to science. You know, the self-help or New Age movement has been around for a long time. People are talking about, preaching about, the good life. That’s been going on for millennia.

The difference now is that we have a… we really have a science of happiness. You know, it’s imperfect as every scientific endeavour is. But the nice thing or the important thing rather about science is that you get closer and closer to, to getting the results, the sought-after results, which, when it comes to positive psychology, it’s higher levels of wellbeing.

So, as long as we stay committed to the scientific pursuit of happiness, then the progress initially maybe a little bit slower than it could have been if we had reverted to the self-help, new age, relying on charisma and promises. So, we are going a little bit slower, but I think it’s a much healthier route to pursue.

Marie: So, what do you think needs to change apart from awareness of the science. Are we talking changes at schools in organisations, you know, the systemic ways that we organise our countries and our governments that needs to change next? What’s the future of this movement look like?

Tal Ben-Shahar: As far as I’m concerned, the most important thing is education and for that to change, universities need to recognise the importance of the science of happiness. Schools need to recognise it, and governments need to recognise it, [and] politicians, because most of the schools are public schools and the curriculum is determined often by politicians or their aides. So, it’s all about educational. You know, Janusz Korczak, the famed Polish educator, said almost 100 years ago,

“If you want to reform the world, you must first change education.” [– Janusz Korczak]

And it certainly applies to the science of happiness. Now how do we do that? I’ll share with you a quick anecdote when we created our program for schools and we tried to get schools to buy in and when I say buy in, I just meant they didn’t even have to pay for it, so it was just to give us the time, which was an hour or two to a week.

We had real difficulties doing that, because Principles said you know, we don’t have time, you know, we need every minute. We need it to do extra math classes or writing classes or… and so on. And it was really challenging. And then I ended up, you know, basically asking friends of mine to introduce it. You know, friends of mine who were school Principals. And there were three of them and they introduced it in their schools. You know more, I mean, they liked the content. They knew the content, but more as a favour to me than anything else.

Marie: Mmm hmm.

Tal Ben Shahar: But there was… This was enough for us to actually do research. And we did research on these on these three schools and over 1000 students. And what we found, the results we found were remarkable. So, we saw levels of resilience went up. Happiness, of course, went up. Anxiety and depression went down and interestingly, not surprisingly, I must add for us. But interestingly, grades went up.

Now as soon as we showed that grades went up and we published this in a couple of the top educational journals, as soon as people read that we had a long, we have still, a long line of schools vying for the program.

Marie: Mmm hmm. Yes.

Tal Ben-Shahar: So, you know, it wasn’t about anxiety, depression, happiness, resilience. It was mostly about grades. And frankly, I don’t care.

Marie: Mmm hmm.

Tal Ben-Shahar: If this is why schools come, then that’s fine. If organisations introduce a program in happiness because it increases profits, that’s great. Whatever it takes. Just introduce this program.

Marie: Sure. All right, I have to admit, I recently finished the Happiness practitioner certificate at the Happiness Studies Academy, and I am a huge fan and I particularly love how you teach modern Western hard science and fact, alongside philosophy, religion, history, Eastern thinking. And the whole time was taking your course, I was thinking, I’m really getting an arts degree here, not just a social science psychology degree. But in your course, everything is really anchored around what you call the SPIRE model.

So, I wonder if you could tell our listeners a little bit more about SPIRE? In particular, starting with what the acronym stands for, and maybe some examples of how to put it in practise.

Tal Ben Shahar: Yes. So, SPIRE, the acronym stands for the Five elements of happiness.

  • The first, S is the spiritual wellbeing.
  • P is physical wellbeing.
  • I stands for intellectual wellbeing.
  • The R is relational wellbeing.
  • And finally, the E is emotional wellbeing.

So, spiritual, physical, intellectual, relational and emotional. All of them are important for happiness but we don’t need to focus on all of them all of the time. In fact, it would be near impossible to do so. But at different times either throughout the day or throughout the week, we need to spend some time at least cultivating all five.

So, Spiritual wellbeing. Of course, it can come from religion, and it does for many people. But spiritual wellbeing is about a sense of meaning and purpose, first and foremost. And you can find that in a church, synagogue, or a mosque. Or you can find it in important work that you do or spending time with your loved ones or saving the world or enhancing the wellbeing of one person. You know, this is about finding meaning and purpose, which is important for spiritual wellbeing, which is important for happiness.

Another aspect of spiritual wellbeing is presence, being in the here and now. You know, if I pay attention to a tree that I walk by or to a person sitting across from me or to the fact that we’re alive and can, can hear or see or walk. These are all miracles if you think about it. You know, Albert Einstein once reportedly said that,

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” [– Albert Einstein]

And being present, uh, certainly brings out the miraculous in our in our life. So that spiritual wellbeing is about purpose and presence.

Physical wellbeing is about nutrition and about exercise and sleep, and recovery in general. For example, regular physical exercise has the same effect on our psychological wellbeing as our most powerful psychiatric medication. Working in the same way, releasing norepinephrine, serotonin, dopamine, the feel-good chemicals in the brain. So, physical wellbeing is a very important part of overall happiness.

Intellectual wellbeing is about curiosity, about learning. You know that people who learn who are constantly asking questions or curious; are not just happier, they’re not just more successful, they also live longer. So, curiosity may kill the cat, but it does the opposite for us humans.

Under intellectual wellbeing is about deep learning, spending time, whether it’s reading a book, engaging in a text or observing and studying a work of art or walking in nature. Again, being present to it and exercising our rational faculty, our intellectual faculty and really learning about the world around us. So, [that’s] intellectual wellbeing.

Then there is, under Relational wellbeing. Number one predictor of happiness, quality time we spend with people we care about and who care about us. And that can be a romantic partner, it can be family, it can be friends, it can be colleagues at work. It actually doesn’t matter, as long as we have close, intimate, supportive relationships. Number one predictor of happiness.

Under relational wellbeing is kindness and generosity. One of the best ways to help ourselves, is to help others. Two sides of the same coin. You know, there’s a lot of talk around, you know, selfishness or selflessness. One is bad, the other is good. Well, I don’t buy either. What we need is not selfishness or selflessness. What we need is self-fullness, because when we help, others were also helping ourselves. When we help ourselves, we’re also indirectly helping others more likely to help others. So that’s relational wellbeing.

And finally, Emotional wellbeing is about embracing painful emotions, accepting them, giving them, giving ourselves the permission to be human. And why, Because of a paradox that if we reject or when we reject painful emotions, they simply intensify and grow stronger. And then it’s about embracing pleasurable emotions like gratitude, like joy, like love, like excitement.

And happiness is about all of these. And as I said earlier, we don’t need to do it all, all the time. But we do need to pay attention to all of them at different times.

Marie: I love E [Emotional wellbeing]. It came late in the course because it’s the last one, but something that really stuck with me that you said, was that,

“There are no bad emotions, only bad behaviours.” [– Tal Ben-Shahar]

And I’ve said that too many people and discussed the learnings, which I think is part of the I [Intellectual] of SPIRE, is taking what you’ve learned and having those deep discussions with others is part of my joy of learning. And when I’ve mentioned that to people, it’s one thing that they really stop, and they take it in, and they think about it. And there were so many nuggets throughout the year and my friends have gone, “Oh, that’s really deep.” They have prompted some wonderful discussions as well.

So, there are lots of different life satisfaction or wellbeing or happiness models out there. And probably the most famous is Martin Seligman’s PERMA model. I’m interested to know when it comes to SPIRE versus PERMA or other models. Is it all just supporting the cause? Or are there differences in SPIRE and PERMA that you particularly wanted to focus in on that you think matter more or less?

Tal Ben Shahar: Yeah, the key with happiness and that I always, even, you know today in a in online weapons are with students. I emphasise with the students that how you define happiness is up to you, meaning there are many ways there isn’t one right way, and you need to find a definition that works for you. So, Seligman uses the PERMA model. You know, the P being Positive emotions, the E is for Engagement for being in the here and now for being in flow, R is for Relationships, M is for Meaning and A is for accomplishments or Achievements.

And the key is to… First of all, obviously, they’re all valid and important elements of happiness and the SPIRE model that I came up with, with my colleagues focuses on other things. For instance, PERMA doesn’t have the physical wellbeing element in it, which I think is critical for a happy life. You know, if I don’t exercise for more than two days. I feel it.

Marie: Mmm hmm.

Tal Ben-Shahar: I mean, I feel more anxious, you know, less calm. You know, I feel like I’m not my best self. Far from it. We know that physical exercise effects our wellbeing. And also, when it comes to accomplishments and achievements, which is part of PERMA. I don’t see it as that important. In fact, it’s one of the biggest myths that people believe that the path to happiness lies in the achievement. Now, if you if you’re working towards something that is personally meaningful to you, where you’re finding you’re exercising your best self and your path to your purpose, that’s a different story. That’s not about the accomplishment or the achievement itself.

So, you know, we differ. We disagree. We’re still friends and supporting one another’s work. And I point out to my, to my students, you know if PERMA is more suitable for your temperament, by all means. If you want to, you know, create another model which will be, you know your own, then by all means [do that]. The key is to identify what’s important for us and then, more importantly, to cultivate that element.

Marie: So, on that note, you taught hundreds of students at Harvard, so you’ve got firsthand experience with how people have implemented your teachings. Is there one thing that stands out above the rest that made the biggest impact in your student’s life? One intervention or area that you saw across the board came out on top more often. Even though everyone has a subjective understanding, and everyone is different. Is there something that stands above the rest?

Tal Ben-Shahar: There are a couple with your permission.

Marie: Mmm hmm. Of course.

Tal Ben Shahar: So probably if I had to choose one, it would be what you mentioned earlier, which is the notion of the permission to be human. In other words, there are no good or bad emotions. There can be good or bad behaviour, but not emotions. Emotions are amoral.

So, you know, feeling, experiencing envy towards my friend does not make me a bad or immoral person. If I act on that envy and hurt my friend, that’s a whole different story.

Marie: Mmm hmm.

Tal Ben-Shahar: And paradoxically, it’s when we accept and embrace painful emotions that we have most control over our behaviour. In other words, saying to myself, I should not experience envy not only intensifies that emotion, it’s also more likely to control me then similarly with fear. You know, experiencing fear doesn’t make me a coward. It simply makes me a human being. And courage is not about, not having fear, but about having the fear and then going ahead anyway. And then the paradox works in the same way here, when I reject fear when I say to myself, well, I shouldn’t be afraid, shouldn’t be anxious. The anxiety and the fear only intensify, and then they are more likely to impact my actions and rather induce lack of action.

Marie: Mmm hmm.

Tal Ben-Shahar: So, I think that’s the, that’s the main thing. Other big ones would be the importance of physical exercise and physical exercise certainly during challenging times. And I would always ask my students, so when is the time you’re least likely to exercise? And inevitably they would say exam period, and I would emphasise and that this is the most important time to explode. Just like today, people say, “well, I’m not exercising because of lock down or because my favourite gym is closed.” And my response is, now is the most important time when their stress levels are at an all-time high.

And I’ll just say one more thing, which is more general. I talk a lot about, as you know, about emotions and the importance of permission to be human and about the importance of cultivating gratitude and love and the pleasurable emotions. And yet, I also emphasis that behaviour is more important than feelings, that what we do matters more than what we feel. In other words, it’s okay to experience fear, not the end of the world. It’s natural. It’s okay to experience envy. It’s okay to experience sadness and anxiety. We can still choose to act in a way that is most appropriate or most moral or most helpful and beneficial to us and the world.

“So, behaviour trump’s emotions.”

Marie: I think what I love most about that is it also addresses what the naysayers say about the toxic positivity movement. We’re really saying it’s okay to feel anger and pain and sadness and all of those, and in fact, it is encouraged and human to do so. And this model addresses that.

Tal Ben-Shahar: And it’s one of the central myths around happiness, namely, that a happy life is a life devoid of pain or frustration or disappointments. And in fact, the first step towards happiness is allowing in unhappiness.

Marie: All right, so I think I know where this is going, but you might surprise me. So, I’ve asked what has been impactful in others. I’m interested to know what happiness habit you always personally prioritise in your week.

Tal Ben-Shahar: Yeah. You know, the happiness habit that I prioritise in my week is prioritising happiness. And what I mean by that is prioritising doing the things that contribute most to what I’ve come to call life’s ultimate currency, the currency of happiness. Specifically, it’s about, you know, first thing I do when I wake up in the morning, I meditate. I exercise three times a week during regular times and over the past year and a half have not been regular times. I do it five times a week. I put time aside for family and friends. And when I mean aside, it means that I disconnect from technology so that I can connect to people. You know, I keep a journal, regularly. You know, I do all the things that I teach, practise yoga, you know, three times a week. So, all these things I prioritise, and they help me then be a better version of myself, which is, you know, a kinder, more generous calmer version.

And, you know, I said that behaviours trump emotions. I don’t always feel great. Just like anyone, anyone else. I feel anxiety, I feel, you know, fear, frustration, anger like everyone else. The difference, though, between you know, where I was 20, 30 years ago and today is that I realised that I first need to accept these emotions and then second ask, “What is the kind of person that I would like to be in the world?” and then act accordingly.

Marie: I love that You said you practise what you teach. A lot of people don’t and again going back to this being a field where you’ve got to find what works for you. I think it was a real wake up moment when I read that Sonja Lyubomirsky doesn’t have her own gratitude journal, laugh, even though she teaches about the importance of gratitude.

Tal Ben-Shahar: Laugh.

Marie: I’m sure she practises gratitude in other ways.

Tal Ben-Shahar: She does it in other ways, and she’s very authentic about it. And she said, “Look, I saw the results in my studies. I personally cannot connect with it. I’ve tried.” And she has tried. I know that and she does other things, whether it’s meditation or she exercises regularly, she cultivates relationships in her life. Yeah, she gets an A for, for more than effort.

M: Laugh. Okay, so before we go, I want to acknowledge no one is perfect and new habits are not easy to form. So, I do want to. We normally end on what are your recommendations for introducing a new happiness habit? Or what’s the one piece of advice? But you do spend some time talking about forming new habits in your course and I’d love you to in part some final words of wisdom for someone who’s found a nugget in our discussion and would like to implement that in their lives for how they can successfully do that. What are your tips and helpful advice?

Tal Ben-Shahar: So, the first thing is to recognise that that many of the things that we know will make us happy, are right in front of us. They’re accessible, and yet we don’t do them. Why? It’s because what I’ve come to call the rhetorical choices in our life.

So, if I if I said to you Marie, tell me, you have a choice, do you want to be grateful and appreciative of all the good things and the good people in your life? or do you or would you like to take them all for granted? Now it’s a rhetorical choice, you know, you and eight billion other people around the world, of course, I want to appreciate rather than take things for granted. And yet, and yet most people, most of the time, take the good things in their lives for granted.

So, we have a rhetorical choice here, and yet we choose unwisely. Why? Not because we don’t think it’s important, but because we forget, because we neglect, because we’re distracted and therefore the first step in introducing change. Based on many of the changes that we know, we want to introduce many of the choices that we know we want to make.

The first thing we need to do is create reminders and reminders can come in the form of a bracelet that I wear that will remind me to be appreciative or to be present in the here and now, rather than always distracted. Or to be kind and because we all want to be kind and generous, it’s a rhetorical choice to be so. And yet we forget, so we need a reminder. It could be a bracelet. It could be a screen saver. It could be a picture on the wall that symbolises the value that we want to incorporate or whatever it is. The first is reminder.

Then we need to think about repetition. It’s not enough to do something once or twice. We need to do it over and over again. If we want to have it become part of who we are, quite literally second nature, just like in sports. You want to become a better tennis player. you have to hit that ball, repetitively. The Coach may need to remind you how to hit it, but after that you need to hit it over and over again. And after you repeat that action after you play that Piano sonata after you hit that ball after you exercise gratitude repeatedly, then comes the ritual.

Ritual is, quite literally, neural pathways that have been formed and that make an activity automatic, habitual. But in order to do that, we need many repetitions, you know, whether it’s 30 repetitions or 21 repetitions or 80 repetitions. But we need repetition before it becomes second nature, whether it’s repetition of brushing our teeth before it became second nature, a ritual in our life, whether it’s the repetition of hitting a tennis ball before it becomes second nature, or whether it’s repeating, expressing gratitude or being kind.

So, we have the three R’s of change, first Reminders, then Repetition and finally Rituals.

Marie: Thank you very much. Is there anything that you would like to add in that I haven’t asked you? I think we’ve covered quite a broad spectrum of happiness questions.

Tal Ben-Shahar: Yes, one thing. And that is to pick one thing or maximum two things from what you’ve heard, either in this podcast or elsewhere that you would like to introduce into your life, not more. Not over doing it. And pick that one or two things and create reminders around it. Repeat it often and much until it becomes a ritual. And only then you can move on to the second thing or the third thing that you want to introduce, gradually, slowly.

Marie: Perfect. Well, thank you so much for your time and for talking to our listeners. It’s been truly a pleasure. And I know that you have a very busy schedule full of happiness habits, so really appreciate. And I’m grateful for the time that you spent with us today.

T: Thank you, Marie.

M: Thank you.

[Happy exit music – background] 

M: Thanks for joining us today if you want to hear more, please remember to subscribe and like this podcast and remember you can find us at www.marieskelton.com, where you can also send in questions or propose a topic. 

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

M: Until next time. 

M & P: Choose happiness. 

[Exit music fadeout] 

Want to learn more about the science of happiness? Make sure to subscribe to my podcast Happiness for Cynics and weekly email newsletter for regular updates and news!  

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

The Gut-Brain Connection

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Research Shows the Gut-Brain Connection is Key to Our State of Mind 

Our body, like the environment, is a diverse and complex ecosystem in which everything is inextricably connected. In the rush of our day to day lives, the truth is that that many of us take this for granted. We fail to recognise the cause and effect of our decisions and ignore the impact our actions have on our bodies and our lives. Yet increasingly, it is becoming apparent that if you want to achieve mental wellbeing or if you experience mental health issues, sticking your head in the sand is no longer an option. The latest research is showing that what we eat is tied to our mental health, impacting our behaviour, emotions and feelings.   

Some of you may have heard the stomach referred to as our “second brain.” This is backed by the latest research showing that what we eat has a direct impact on both our physiology and psychology, proving there is a direct correlation between food and our happiness. It is vital to understand that research done on this subject doesn’t mean that merely changing your diet will improve your mood. Research does suggest, however, that we need to understand the “gut-brain” connection and the misconceptions about where chemicals responsible for our mood emanate.  

Understanding our Hedonistic Tendencies 

We’ve all had bad days when all we want to do when we get home is order take-out and binge on wine, chips, ice-cream [insert your guilty pleasure here]. We all know that eating certain foods can provide instant gratification and help soothe the soul. And culturally, we are conditioned to use food as a treat for good behaviour and achievement – how often have you heard a frustrated parent say: “If you eat your dinner, you can have dessert.” Families celebrate around food, and ‘special’ food is reserved for special occasions. Yet in a world of low-priced junk-food and convenience shopping, many of us can find ourselves eating ‘special’ foods daily.  

For those who experience depression or struggle with mental wellness, eating what we want is only a temporary way to achieve satiation and create a fleeting sense of satisfaction. The fact is that the moment food is consumed and hits our body’s digestive system, a complex process begins that determines our deeper state of mind. And, when you include into the mix the proliferation of psychotropic drugs developed to treat mental illness, the result is a rise of misconceptions about how to find happiness.   

Common Misconceptions About Where Happiness Emanates 

Generally speaking, most people assume that our emotions and moods are the result of chemical reactions in the brain, which makes complete sense since psychiatrists and psychologists – and the pharmaceutical industry – have been touting this theory for centuries. Based largely on years of theoretical evidence, this is the reason why psychotropic drugs are often used to treat depression. However, a relatively new field of study is telling a completely different story about the root cause of depression, concluding that the gut is where the journey begins when it comes to our state of mind.  

One naturally occurring chemical in our body, serotonin, is primarily responsible for our emotions and happiness, among other things. It is a common misconception that this vital chemical messenger or neurotransmitter, exists in the brain. The fact is that 90 percent of the body’s serotonin is produced in the gut. In a study conducted by two University of California – Los Angeles biologists, Elaine Hsiao and Thomas Fund, it was found that specific gut bacterium detect and transport serotonin into bacterial cells, which than travel to the brain. Furthermore, Hsiao and Fund determined that when there is an imbalance in gut-bacterium, which is impacted directly by what we eat and anti-depressants, serotonin levels are significantly lowered. In layman’s terms, the study supports the premise directly connecting our diet and proper nutrition to our emotional wellbeing.  

As part of their study, when the researchers added a popular antidepressant, they found that bacterium transported significantly less serotonin. “Previous studies from our lab and others showed that specific bacteria promote serotonin levels in the gut,” said Fung. “Our new study tells us that certain gut bacteria can respond to serotonin and drugs that influence serotonin, like anti-depressants. There is a unique form of communication between bacteria and our own cells through molecules traditionally recognized as neurotransmitters.”  

When the team added a popular anti-depressant with bacterium, it resulted in lower levels of the transfer of serotonin to the brain.  The team’s research aligns with a growing number of studies reporting that antidepressants can alter gut microbiota.  

The Science Behind Food and Mood 

“We tend to separate our brain from the rest of our body, but good health means good holistic health – from head to toe,” said Dr. Gabriela Cora, a board-certified nutritional psychiatrist, recently said in a Medium article investigating the connection between diet and emotions. “Why wouldn’t we think eating well would also impact our mental health?” 

Our gastrointestinal tract is home to billions of bacteria – good and bad – that influence the production of neurotransmitters like serotonin as well as dopamine. The difference between the two is that while serotonin is generally associated with how one processes emotions, dopamine is linked more closely with pleasurable experiences and, conversely, when inhibited, results in low motivation, one of the key indicators of depression. Together, having an equilibrium in the levels of serotonin and dopamine has a direct impact on our piece of mind. Conversely, when one or both are out of sync, it can create an internal turmoil that wreaks havoc on our mental state.  

So, where and how does food come into play? Why is eating well so important? Eating healthy food (think the opposite of junk food) promotes the growth of good bacteria, which positively affects positive neurotransmitter production and sends constructive messages to the brain. According to Dr. Cora, “when you stick to a diet of healthy food, you’re setting yourself up for fewer mood fluctuations, an overall happier outlook, and an improved ability to focus.” 

There is no shortage of diets or food regimens from which to choose but few of them reference an impact on mental health. In general, most are focused on losing weight or on living a more balanced life, both of which are positive. One common denominator among a majority of these programs that does impact depression is removing the intake of excessive amounts of sugar and refined carbohydrates.  

Additionally, according to a Psychology Today article written by Dr. Mahmoud Ghannoum, Ph.D., there are numerous studies indicating that probiotics can reduce depression in a manner comparable to conventional prescription medications.  

Trust Your Gut 

It would be easy to relegate solving mental health issues solely to what you eat. Everyone is different and the degree to which one experienced depression or anxiety varies and involves numerous factors, both physiological and psychological. If you are struggling to find greater happiness, trust your gut and seek professional help if you feel it is necessary. It is equally important to take control of your own happiness. To do this, you can work to develop healthy habits and become more knowledgeable about proactive steps you can take on your own to become happier!  

Want to learn more about the science of happiness? Make sure to subscribe to my podcast Happiness for Cynics and my email newsletter for regular updates & resilience resources! 

Self-Care, Are You Doing it Right? (E75)

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Happiness for Cynics podcast

This week, Marie and Pete talk about how self-care has become a buzzword with bad repercussions and ask the question, are you doing it right?

Transcript

[Happy intro music -background]

M: Welcome to happiness for cynics and thanks for joining us as we explore all the things I wish I’d known earlier in life but didn’t.

P: This podcast is about how to live the good life. Whether we’re talking about a new study or the latest news or eastern philosophy, our show is all about discovering what makes people happy.

M: So, if you’re like me and you want more out of life, listen in and more importantly, buy in because I guarantee if you do, the science of happiness can change your life.

P: Plus, sometimes I think we’re kind of funny.

[Intro music fadeout]

M: Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!

P: Laugh.

M: It’s round one, Pete.

P: Oh dear, I don’t look forward to these ones and where Marie’s all, you know motivated to strip me bare of any –

M: Laugh!

P: – challenges that I might have. This is going to get ugly, folks.

M: Laugh. So Pete, you have the topic for today’s show.

P: I have the floor, laugh.

M: And I am in the other corner, laugh. It’s like high school debate team. I’m just arguing for the sake of the other argument. You know, sake of the other side.

P: As we know, in terms of competitiveness. We know that I’m a competitive person, but I am nothing compared to the onslaught that is Marie Skelton when she’s motivated.

M: Laugh.

P: So, gird your loins people! Laughter!

M: Yep.

P: Today, we are talking about, are you doing self-care, right?

M: No!

P: Laugh.

M: Or am I yes? Am I the affirmative?

P: Let, me put my argument forward first, Laugh.

M: Laugh, put your argument forward.

P: Ahh, pressure.

M & P: Laugh.

P: So, I’ve been doing some research on the social media. I came across this rather wonderful article by a woman called Brianna Wiest, and she’s in Philadelphia, and she is a self-awareness and self-understanding author. She’s written several books in the early 20-tens and early 2020’s, Essays That Will Change The Way You Think (2016),  The Mountain Is You (2020) and Ceremony (2021). It’s an interesting concept because she talks about self-care is often a very un-beautiful thing.

M: Mmm.

P: So, Marie and I are both proponents of the whole hygge concept that getting yourself into pyjamas, having a nice cup of tea, watching some Disney or something indulgent is really fantastic. We both agree on that, yep?

M: We even wrote a book on self-care Pete?

P & M: Laughter.

M: Why don’t we just go back a little bit further? Laugh.

P: Ok, we agree that things that are a little bit indulgent are good for us to do because they do contribute to our happiness, and it is good to reward yourself. Remember that phrase because we’re going to come back to that. It is good to reward yourself.

M: Hmm.

P: What I like about what Brianna is talking about is that there’s a certain part of self-care that is not the sitting in the bath having a chocolate cake frenzy and eating doughnuts. That’s not necessarily what you need to do to have self-care. Neither is it going on a shopping spree and spending lots of money on your credit card or indulging in over-eating snacks.

M: You’re really going hard on the doughnuts.

P: I’m going hard on it, yeah, but we’ve got to give you some fodder here Marie.

M: Laugh. Mmm hmm. So, she’s saying it’s not any of those things and it shouldn’t be any of those things?

P: It’s not the only part of self-care, and I’ll just paraphrase here. I’ll try and read out… try and surmise the article and what she talks about.

The opening statement is that self-care is making a spreadsheet of your debt and enforcing a morning routine, cooking yourself healthy meals and no longer just running from your problems and calling the distraction a solution? So, we agree on that. We’ve talked about that before. It’s about doing the hard work, putting things in place to make sure you address the issues rather than just going, ‘I’m going to tell myself to be happy.’

M: No, disagree. [Fail noise]

P: Ok.

M: Round One has started! Laugh.

P: Laugh, unpack this. Go for it, Muz!

M: I think that self-care is about listening to your body and your mind and your emotions and giving it what it needs and what it needs doesn’t have to be boring, hard, you know it, it’s framing it differently.

So doing your finances isn’t shitty and horrible. It’s, you know, looking after yourself. So, I think it’s a framing thing for me more than is it actually… like semantics, maybe we could argue.

P: Yeah, ok I’ll give you that.

M: I think that listening to your body and your emotions and all of that and going, I need to stop my diet and have five doughnuts –

P: Yep.

M: – and feel guilty about it and next time only have three.

P: Laugh.

M: And feel guilty about it next time, maybe have two when I’m needing that outlet that sugar rush or whatever it is on knowing that those adjustments and behaviour come sans-guilt and judgement and that we’re all growing and learning.

P: Yep.

M: I think that self-care is about when you’re feeling depleted in any way, as happens so often. Being kind to yourself and listening to what your body needs.

P: I definitely agree with the being kind to yourself.

M: Sometimes… The 1% means overindulgence, right? But the things you’re talking about is not. I wouldn’t say self-care is doing your finances, eating healthy, doing your exercise. That should be a day-to-day how we prioritise living.

P: I agree.

M: Not the stuff we do on top that we need to ask special permission from our bosses to leave early to go the gym… or any of the other things we shouldn’t be excusing all of those other behaviours as secondary to work or family, or you know, whatever else, your partner, it should be up there and just as important.

P: Yeah.

M: And this is the mind shift that I’m waiting to happen at the moment that all of those activities that make life worth living and make life happy and that are critical to our mental health should not be second class citizens in our schedule.

P: Yes, one of the other things she brings up is that becoming the person you know you want to and are meant to be.

M: Yep.

P: And someone who knows that salt baths and chocolate cake are ways to enjoy life but not escape from it.

M: Yes. It’s not escaping, it’s just going ‘Oh, I’ve had a crappy day, I got fired from my job and I don’t know how I’m gonna pay next month’s rent.’

P: Yep.

M: Life’s good apart from that, but today I’m eating the cake.

P: Yep, laugh.

M: And maybe having that extra glass of wine.

P: Yeah, true.

M: Yeah.

P: And this comes back to rewarding yourself and the way that we choose to reward ourselves. There is an escapism in having the doughnut, having the bath, having the red wine. And that’s, I guess my question is, is that self-care? Or is that just a momentary reprieve?

M: Again, If your definition like mine of self-care, is that it’s listening to what your body needs.

P: Mmm hmm.

M: Then it is self-care, I think. Because for me, eating well, not drinking too much, taking care of your finances, being physically active, journaling, doing gratitude, practicing love, all of that stuff is how you should live.

P: Mmm.

M: Self-care is above that, and beyond that, and amongst all of those ways that you should live there are… We’ve talked about negative affect and positive affect, and I think it’s when those spikes hit, where your up or down, where self-care comes in.

P: Yep.

M: I’ve been working on a project that today has finished!

P: Oh, congrats!

M: And for the last month I’ve been exhausted just trying to get to this day. But I’ve booked a holiday for the end of this month and that self-care for me. I need that time at the end of this month to unwind, decompress and during that time I’m not going off to theme parks and travelling the world. Not that any of those are options for me at the moment.

P & M: Laughter.

M: I intend on going somewhere really quiet where I can write and read.

P: Yeah, right.

M: And that’s self-care. That’s special.

P: It is. You’re right, you’re absolutely right as well Marie. I don’t want, I don’t want to sound like I’m saying don’t reward yourself because we know that reward is important.

M: Mmm hmm.

P: And we’ve got people like Gretchen Rubin, I think she’s one of your mates, Muz.

M & P: Laugh!

M: I wish she was one of my mates! I’ve mentioned Gretchen before, that’s probably where you got that, laugh.

P: Yeah, laugh. She talks about the importance of reward, the importance of the little treat, the receiving of the surprise gift or watching a funny video gained in self-control.

“The secret of adulthood, give more to myself so I can ask more from myself.” [Gretchen Rubin]

M: Yes.

P: I like that quite from her.

M: So, self-care is looking after yourself so that you can give more, be more, do more, etc.

P: Mmm. And you want to keep going into those periods where you are working hard because you know that there’s a little reward in the end.

M: Or a big reward?

P: Big reward, yeah.

M: There’s satisfaction in kicking these goals and getting stuff done.

P: Yeah. Susan Biali, who is also a medical doctor, also talks about reward and she talks about it in terms of the celebratory treats that will enhance us and not make us regret.

M: Mmm.

P: What Susan Biali talks about is that we need to choose our rewards carefully to make sure that they’re contributing and they’re not detracting. So, they’re not something that we’re going to regret later on and so that could be about having a reward that is proactive in terms of reinforcing what you’ve done.

M: So, there’s many models for happiness, but we’ve talked about relationships, purpose and meaning and healthy mind body. And I’ve been letting part of my healthy mind and body down recently, which is physical exercise.

P: Right.

M: I’ve been over indexing on a few other things, so now that we’re in lock down, I’ve got my treadmill and I’ve made myself a little deal.

P: Have you given your treadmill a name?

M & P: Laughter!

M: It does need a name, hey?

P: Laugh, Rupert?

M: I’m going to have to think about that, laugh. The way that I am motivating myself is that I can only watch Disney when I’m on the treadmill.

P: Laugh, [Clap].

M: So, I’m watching Raya the Dragon at the moment.

P: Oh! I really want to watch that too.

M: And if I want to get through it, I have to keep running, laugh.

P: Yep, like. There we go, that’s a great reward.

M & P: Laughter.

P: Oh, fantastic. Love it. The interesting thing about rewards as well is that, now Gretchen talks about this in her book as well, The Happiness Project, and she talks about the difficulties in setting rewards that may not be a good aspect, and one of the things she brings up is that the attainment of the goal and the reward marks a finishing line on the finishing line marks a stopping point.

So, you could have developed this wonderful habit of doing the treadmill. But then, if you reward yourself with something and you go, okay, well, that’s done never doing that again.

M: Then you break your own good habit. Oh, that’s a shame.

P: It’s a shame, but it’s something to keep in mind that you don’t want the reward to write you off because you want to keep that good habit going true?

M: Mostly depending on the habit. Yes, eventually, you’ll want to finish studying.

P: Yes, absolutely.

M: Laugh, for instance.

P: Yep, I agree.

M: I probably should not be aiming to finish running.

P: Laugh.

M: It’s a healthy habit I want to maintain.

P & M: Laugh.

M: Yep, so the other thing I’ve done for that. So, I take my lunch break and I make sure I take my lunch break and I’m not allowed to eat my lunch until I’ve done my run.

P: Oh, that’s good.

M: So, that’s the other reward.

P: Yeah.

M: And the great thing that many people before me have found, I’m not new to finding this is that the more I do it, the more I then choose healthy food options when I go to lunch, and you know –

P: Yeah, cause you’re reinforcing [healthy habits].

M: – it has flow on effect.

P: Yep definitely. There’s one other thing that Gretchen Rubin talks about in terms of rewards, and that’s the decision. So, reward requires a decision. I.e. Do I deserve this reward.

M: Mmm.

P: And every time we make that decision, there is the opportunity to make the wrong choice. There are too many loopholes to choose from. When you have that decision in place that we have an opt out if you like, it’s like, ‘well bugger it, I won’t go for a run, cause I don’t want to watch Disney anymore.’

M: Laugh.

P: You can fool yourself into making bad choices, even with a reward.

M: We are so good at fooling ourselves, aren’t we?

P: Yes, yes!

M: Damn human brains!

P: Laugh! So, when thinking about rewards and this comes back to the article by Brianna Wiest. What I like about it is, self-care is not just about giving yourself all the indulgences. There is a little bit of work in there, and there are sensible choices to make in terms of reward and pleasure and what to reinforce for good self-care.

M: Mmm.

P: And part of that as you were saying Marie, and I think we agree on this one is part of that self-care is looking after the body, looking after your relationships and having some purpose and that can be a little bit of hard work.

M: And if your day today is not balanced or you’re out of whack in some way, self-care is about understanding those things in your day to day enough.

P: Yes.

M: And listening to yourself enough to be able to identify when you need to change things. So, when you need to just go to bed earlier, that is self-care to me.

P: Yeah.

M: You know. For me it’s not the day to day, it is more the exceptions.

P: Mmm. There’s a quote here that I read from Brianna’s article,

“It is learning how to stop trying to “fix yourself” and start trying to take care of yourself.” – [Brianna Wiest]

M: Yes.

P: Now that’s diving a little bit deeper into addressing issues and so forth and trying to look at your lifestyle and go one of the bad influences. She also talks about the toxic nature – that may not be the best word to use – of this internal pressure of self-care. Like ‘Oh, I better be looking good, or I better do this, or I better do that.’

M: Everything is a to do list!

P: Yes!

M: We’ve talked about this before. All of this stuff that is meant to make us happier can just make people think, ‘holly molly how am I supposed to fit all this into my week.

P: Laugh, yeah.

M: Ahh, it can add more stress.

P: Absolutely.

M: Yeah.

P: And that’s, maybe that’s what she’s talking about in terms of the ugly side of it. There’s a little bit of stuff about being dishevelled and doing your ironing so that you can go to work the next day and look decent and presentable for a professional interaction.

M: No way! That is not self-care!

P: No?

M: Nope, round two. Here we go.

P & M: Laugh!

P: Elaborate, Marie?

M: That’s living life, doing your ironing that is life. Doing your finances –

P: Ok.

M: – doing your personal hygiene.

P: Laugh!

M: Physical exercise, eating well, sleeping well, all of that is life, I think, and it is a juggle and It’s not easy. I don’t want it to be a seen as self-care anymore. I want it to be seen as skills that we teach kids. I want them to know how to be mindful and practise meditation and calm their minds and turn off the busy noise of the 21st century.

P: Yep.

M: I want them to understand how to control their emotions and when not to control their emotions as well. I want people to understand that life is not just about working.

P: Mmm.

M: What a sad, sad thing for your life just to be about –

P: Oh, absolutely.

M: – getting a house with a picket fence and two point whatever children –

P: Two point four.

M: – and a partner and entering the rat race and staying there till you retire. And then, I don’t know, maybe while you still can you might get on a cruise once a year, right?

P: Laugh.

M: Like that’s not life. That’s not living, that’s not life. And that’s not how to have a satisfying life.

P: It’s the checklist approach, isn’t it? It’s the tick, tick.

M: It’s the capitalist approach.

P: Ahh. Ohh.

M: It’s the consumer, you know, and you want bigger and better things along the way.

P: Mmm, mmm.

M: Pretty much.

P: Yeah, consumer self-care.

M: No, that’s the consumer approach that you and I went through school learning maths and English and all of that in order to get a good job so that we could be contributing members of society. And that meant following that script.

P: Yep.

M: I think that we haven’t to date done a good enough job of also telling kids, here’s how you also get satisfaction out of your job and here’s how you get happiness out of your life along the way and those things don’t need to stop or disappear.

P: No.

M: But there’s so much more in there and they’re not add-ons. They are not the icing on the cake.

P: Mmm.

M: They’re essential pieces for our existential health.

P: Wow, wow! Laugh!

M: They’re essential pieces of life. It’s how to live life, and that’s what we haven’t taught people to date very well.

P: So, they’re part of the recipe?

M: Absolutely. We need to add them in, and we need to stop apologising for it.

P: Oooh!

M: We need to stop as I said before, feeling bad for being 10 minutes late to work because we got caught up at the gym finishing a set. And, you know, we’ve just added all this stress and we’re 10 minutes late and no one notices. Just stay 10 minutes late at the end, who cares?

P: Laugh.

M: A lot of the time, obviously there are some places where it matters. If you’re 10 minutes late.

P: Yeah.

M: But we need to stop apologising for wanting to go see a kid’s theatre production or anything, going to get a massage and taking a long lunch.

P: Mmm.

M: If you’ve got the flexibility in your work to do that.

P: Mmm.

M: That is, that is living and it is a valuable and needed part of life and it’s not an add-on it’s not tack-on and I don’t think that it should be self-care. I think self-care is when all of that is just a bit out of whack or out of balance, and you need to take extra care.

P: Right. I like that, I definitely agree with that point.

M: Hold on, we’re not meant to be agreeing. Laugh.

P: I know, but damn it, we just, we always get to this point, Laugh!

M: This is the problem when you have two besties on a podcast.

P: Laugh!

So, I was meant to be having a relatively free week this week, and next week I was supposed to be going on a holiday, my one-week holiday for my 12 months of the year, I was going to go up to Byron and have a little week off.

M: [Singsong voice] Someone sounds a little bitter, laugh.

P: Oh, I’m not bitter… much. Laugh.

M: Right? Who wouldn’t be bitter? Let’s be really clear here, this sucks.

P: Laugh.

M: You’re in lock down.

P: Yes.

M: It’s not happening.

P: I was sort of looking at my diary going well, I’m not allowed to go to Byron, I’m not allowed to leave my house. I’m not allowed to even go to the gym. Which brings me a lot of pleasure and a lot of enjoyment.

M: Oh.

P: I’m not allowed to go for a drive in my car. It was so sunny the other day and I was in my car driving to work, which I was allowed to do because apparently, I’m essential services. And I just had the top down and I had music on, and it was sunny. And I just wanted to keep going. I just wanted to drive to the mountains like I had his utter urge. And I couldn’t do it.

M: And it’s winter, so you can’t even tend your rooftop garden, laugh.

P: Laugh, true. Well, I could have on that day because it was sunny. It was a momentary burst of sunshine.

M: It is Sydney.

P: Yeah.

M: Which isn’t really winter.

P: Yeah, we get like six weeks of winter. The point was that I looked at my diary for next week and, well, I can’t do any of the lovely things that I was going to do for myself. So, I may as well just open up my diary for work because I’m allowed to work. And I thought, oh my god this is horrible.

M: Mmm hmm.

P: Like the one thing that I’m allowed to do is to actually work. So, Tuesday and Monday every week we’re really busy and I realised that I’d actually booked myself entirely out with work obligations because there was nothing left that I could do, and I thought ‘I don’t want this.’

M: You need to do nothing every now and then too.

P: Exactly, yeah. And it was a really realisation that me the free spirit is all I’m about, you know, all the buying into all this stuff on doing it naturally and I was really confronted with it with the lock down experience.

M: Lock down just makes us question everything, doesn’t it?

P: It does. It definitely does and that can be a helpful thing.

M: And healthy.

P: And questioning, re-questioning, re-prioritising, finding yourself.

M: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” – [Socrates]

P: Oh, who said that?

M: I have no idea, I can’t remember.

P: Laugh!

M: I’m so bad.

P: Laugh!

So, one thing before we wrap up here, I want to also address the idea that self-care means being the hero of your own life, not the victim.

M: Yes. No one likes a… Wait, I’m taking that back. That’s horrible.

P: Laugh! This is, again what Brianna was talking about was that it means rewiring what you have until your everyday life isn’t something you need therapy to recover from.

I think this is super important and this aligns exactly with what you’re saying Muz.

M: No.

P: Oh, oh. It doesn’t?

M: Because she’s still going with the idea that self-care is the add-on, still go on it’s a valid point.

P: Oh, no. I don’t know. I don’t think she is, because I think she’s talking about building a life, building the recipe that has parts of the self-care paradigm in its such as doing your exercises, eating well all that sort of stuff, indulging in a small reward at the end of a project. Treating yourself to a theatre experience, for example, when you’ve had six weeks of really tough work obligations.

M: Mmm hmm.

P: But it’s also about taking care of things so that you don’t need therapy from your own lifestyle. If you’re pushing hard and going for those tick list items, and it’s creating drama and creating stress, that is just so all-encompassing that you need to take a week off of the end of it because you enforced this on yourself. That’s not helpful.

M: I think it’s reality though.

P: To a certain degree.

M: To a certain degree, yes. There is a line, absolutely. If you’re a serial over-committer then assess your life and take something out.

P: Yep.

M: Look at what you can find or change or whatever. Find?

P: She actually mentioned that as well.

M: 21st century living is not smooth, it’s not linear are and it’s not predictable. And there will always be times where a well-oiled machine will break down.

P: True.

M: Just like your story for next week, right?

P: Mmm.

M: You could not have predicted a lock down.

P: Yeah, yeah absolutely.

M: You had planned for a healthy mental break from your studies. And it’s not happening. And you know, you’ve had to go through a little bit of self-exploration to work out what to do instead that is going to set you up for success next semester. Again you still need that break.

P: Yeah. So, to wrap it up, sometimes we need to be a bit more mindful of the things that were involving in our day to day life. We need to build that recipe that includes those elements of the self-care, whatever they want to be, and that in finding our ways of rewarding ourselves, we need to be mindful of the types of rewards. Make sure your rewards will invigorate rather than burn you out or be detrimental to your life.

M: Oh, I like that. We’re going to end there.

P: I got an agreement! Yes! I scored! One for Petey! Laugh!

M: On that note I’m going to wish you a happy week ahead and we’ll see you then.

P: Laugh, bye.

M: Bye.

[Happy exit music – background]

M: Thanks for joining us today if you want to hear more, please remember to subscribe and like this podcast and remember you can find us at www.marieskelton.com, where you can also send in questions or propose a topic.

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

M: Until next time.

M & P: Choose happiness.

[Exit music fadeout]

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

Are You Blindly Riding the Hedonic Treadmill? (E68)

by

Happiness for Cynics podcast

This week, Marie and Pete talk about happiness set points and the hedonic treadmill and ask the question, are you blindly riding it?

Show notes

During the podcast Pete references a Ted talk about social inequality, please see attached below.

Transcript

[Happy intro music -background]

M: Welcome to happiness for cynics and thanks for joining us as we explore all the things I wish I’d known earlier in life but didn’t.

P: This podcast is about how to live the good life. Whether we’re talking about a new study or the latest news or eastern philosophy, our show is all about discovering what makes people happy.

M: So, if you’re like me and you want more out of life, listen in and more importantly, buy in because I guarantee if you do, the science of happiness can change your life.

P: Plus, sometimes I think we’re kind of funny.

[Intro music fadeout]

M: Hi.

P: And we’re back.

M: We’re back.

P: Laugh!

M: Regular as clockwork.

P: Like the passing of the sands through the hourglass,

M & P: so are the days of our lives. Laughter!

P: Oh my god, I can’t believe I remembered that. How many years ago was that?

M: Oh dear. Laugh.

P: Hey, I’ve got a story, I got a share story. Can I share?

M: Yes, share your story.

P: So, with all this work that we have been doing around happiness and consciousness and mindfulness and all that sort of stuff. I had an event happen last week where I got a letter in the mail which was horrible.

M: Oh.

P: And it resulted in a bad, a bad lose for the week.

M: Mmm hmm.

P: And I went to bed that night and I had nightmares that there was a Jaguar in my room and I woke up at 4 in the morning and I couldn’t get back to sleep. Obviously, I was stressed from this letter. I kind of went ‘oh no, what am I going to do? and I’m not sleeping well, and I thought this is a great opportunity for me to practise what I preach.’

M: Yes!

P: So, I got up in the morning and I had a PT appointment booked with my lovely trainer Alan and I was shattered, I was tired, I was like ‘oh I can’t do this’. But I got up and I went ‘No, I’m going to go and I trust Alan, he won’t push me if my body is not ready for it. So I got there and he said, ‘ooh you looked tired.’

M: Soft Laugh.

P: Yeah, I woke up at four a.m. and I couldn’t get back to sleep. And he went, ‘right.’ So we took the workout right back, but we did some stuff that was really challenging. And I walked out of that gym as I always do… feeling better than when I walked in.

M: Yep.

P: And I went straight home and I took action against this letter, straightaway.

M: Mmm hmm.

P: I rang up people, I got advice, it pushed me to be more proactive and if this had happened six months ago, I wouldn’t have taken those steps. I would have stayed in my little hole and buried my head in the sand and maybe not taken direct action. And I thought, this is really what we talk about.

M: Yes.

P: Taking control and doing the one step for one thing that you can take control of. For me, it was going and doing the exercise, even though I felt terrible. I was like ‘No, go and do it because you know that exercise brings about happy hormones, makes you more engaged and it gets you actioning things.

M: And not only that, you’re actually getting some social benefit out of it because you like your trainer.

P: Exactly.

M: You’ve been with him for a few years now.

P: Yeah, I have. Yeah, he’s fantastic. As I said, I always walk out of that place [feeling] better than when I walked in. So just a little tip, you know, even though you and I are the ones that are bringing all this stuff to our lovely listeners, we still have challenges.

M: Oh!

P: We still have things that screw up our day and present us with a aaahhhh! But we have the tools.

M: So, I was on a panel this week because it’s Mental Health Month.

P: Yay!

M: And one of the things that me and the other panellists talked about a fair bit was sleep.

P: Mmm.

M: And how it is the one thing that all of us have a bad night’s sleep every now and then, particularly those of us with pets or kids. It happens more often.

P & M: Laugh!

M: Not just angry or bad letters, but it’s one of those things that can really impact your happiness the next day.

P: Oh definitely.

M: It is just so common, and what I love about your story is that you recognised it.

P: Mmm hmm.

M: So, you’ve done enough self-assessment that you’re now understanding your triggers.

P: Yes.

M: And we all have triggers.

P: Yep.

M: My husband leaving his socks on the floor in the doorway. That’s one of my triggers. Laugh!

P: Constantly comes up on this show.

M: Laugh.

P: Every chance you get you remind us of that one, laugh.

M: Yep, being injured.

P: Yep.

M: So, I’ve just sports-wise, had a bad back for the last few weeks, have been struggling with that. Poor sleep, there’s a number of things for me that are my triggers and I’m now so much more aware of those triggers and therefore know to cut myself some slack.

P: That’s emotional first aid.

M: Absolutely, yep. So what are we talking about today?

P: I don’t want to say this ‘cause I’ll say it wrong.

M: Hedonic Treadmill.

P: Amygdala! Laugh. Nor-epinephrine!

M: Laugh! I think we had hedonistic treadmill written down some point.

P: We did! Because I remember thinking that sounds fun, laugh!

M: Instead of the hedonic treadmill. Laugh.

So, we are talking about… and I wanted to start, I love that we started with story. I was going to start with a quote, but we’ll get to the quote now and it is a famous Socrates quote and he once said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

P: [Reverent sound of awe] Aaahhhh…

M: So I have a question for you Pete.

P: Oh, Q&A.

M: Are you loving your life?

P: Yes, very easy to answer that question.

M: I would love for our listeners at home to really ask themselves that question and truthfully, answer it because for a lot of people myself included in my twenties and thirties.

P: Yep.

M: I was living life, I wasn’t loving life necessarily. And there’s this theory called the hedonic treadmill, which a lot of us in Western society will have been blindly following because we haven’t examined our life. We haven’t spent the time examining the scripts that our parents and society and school and government gave us.

P: Ah, yes.

M: And we live in a Western consumerist society that teaches us from a very young age that success and achievement is important.

P: Yes.

M: And so we spend a lot of our lives going after the next thing.

P: Mmm.

M: Good grades, a good school, good job, a good company, a promotion, a house, a bigger house, a McMansion –

P: Laugh!

M: – the list goes on and on. And there’s this unwritten understanding that that will make things good for you and maybe happy.

P: You’re ticking the boxes.

M: Yep.

P: You’re ticking all the boxes that are presented for the recipe that was handed down from your parents and from their parents –

M: – for what’s important.

P: Exactly.

M: Yep. Now the research shows us that is our society and how we’re generally programmed unless your parents had a different view, or you went to an alternative school. That’s the prevailing theory and way that our society is set up.

Now the hedonic treadmill is a theory that we have a tendency to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness after major positive or negative events or life changes. So, if you get a promotion or a pay rise, your expectations and desires for, say a bigger house or a nicer car will rise accordingly, which results in no permanent gain in happiness.

P: Ok.

M: Similarly, if you get fired, for instance, you may be sad for a while, but then you’ll balance back out. And we talked the other day about your set point.

P: Yeah.

M: So, really what we’re saying here is that you’ve got a set point that you naturally and somewhat biologically sit at.

P: Yep.

M: On a scale of one to ten, you might sit at a six naturally, and if you get fired, then for a period time you might be a two or three or you might dip all the way to a one, but eventually you will come back to a six.

P: Personally I like to think of myself as a size eight.

M: Laugh! We’re not talking sizes.

P: Eight just fits me, laugh.

M: Well, actually, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned studying with the Happiness Studies Academy, and one of the things we do is regularly ask ourselves how we’re doing against – They have, a model with five elements, and you rate yourself against each of them.

P: Ah yeah.

M: I’m consistently high on those, generally I’m a nine.

P: I’m really good at four, one I’m shit on.

M: Laugh.

P: Although it’s going up lately. That’s good, Laugh.

M: Good. And, I think we tend to prefer some of them, for me, its intellectual.

P: Yeah, there are things that you’re drawn to, and they’re the ones that we might spend a bit more time on. And it’s, I love that exercise because it does highlight the fact that even if you’re just looking at that diagram or those five sections and you can say to yourself ‘yeah, number three’s a bit dodgy.’

M: Yes.

P: You know that you have to focus on that, or at least to devote a little bit more time to that. Or ask yourself the question. What am I doing to satisfy number three?

M: Yep, and to bring balance across all of them? Because we know that having that imbalance leads to a lot of issues.

P: Yep.

M: Yep, or put you at risk when those bad events happen, of not being able to bounce back or be more resilient?

P: Exactly, yeah. This is what I’m saying about my story is that I felt like I had more tools at my disposal. So, when I woke up at four I was like, ‘Oh, it’s going to be that night. It’s going to be, I’m not going to, yeah, I’m out, I’m done.’

M & P: Laugh.

P: Get comfortable with that and then make the adjustment. And then it was, it was the next morning and I’m like right. I’m going to get on top of this bang, bang, bang. I was much more active than I’ve ever been before, Yay Me 😊

M: And they say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

P: Are you calling me an old dog?

M: Laugh, I just did.

P: Laugh!

M: So, what this means when you look at it from the hedonic treadmill point of view is that chasing those material things might make you happier in the moment. But it’s not going to raise your set point. It’s not going to make your subjective well-being or your happiness levels higher overall.

P: This comes back to that example we had a few weeks ago about the guys in the New Zealand who got the promotion, and we’re working harder and longer and their perceived happiness was higher and you are all ‘Mmm, I’m not sure about that one, I challenge that.’ This is the same thing.

M: Exactly, yep.

P: Were they happier because of what they’re achieving? Or is it that they’re happier because that was what society had set for them with the goals that they wanted.

M: So, this is all saying the opposite of what that that study said, which is that you’ll only get a small hit to your happiness levels and then you come back to your base line a set point.

P: Mmm.

M: So chasing the success, the bigger house, you know, the unit, the house, the McMansion and the white picket fences and going up and up and up –

P: Yep.

M: – will make you feel so happy the day that you put the sold sticker on the board and you take your photo in front of your house.

P: Laugh!

M: And share it on Facebook with everyone, and you’ll be feeling on top of the world that day within a small amount of time, a tiny amount of time. That house just becomes your new normal, and you go back to your base happiness level.

P: That’s when you get the $200,000 reno.

M: Exactly, and then it’s more and more and more and for today’s kids, I really feel sorry for them because they’re so much more able to compare themselves against others because of social media. Again, we’ve spoken about that before as well that it makes it really hard to live and to take yourself out of those societal expectations, particularly when social connection is so important, particularly teens.

P: Yeah.

M: And to not buy into having the latest shoes and latest jeans and the latest –

P: Yes.

M: – and having a car. I Remember the kids who had cars. I was so jealous.

P: Me too, laugh!

M: Yep, absolutely so we know that there’s a number of things that make people happier. And the number one thing is social connection.

P: This is your big thing, this is your big platform? You love your social connections?

M: Well, it’s where all the research starts. Any model out there, whether you’re talking Martin Seligman or Tal Ben Shahar or any of the positive psychology bigwigs out there all have something about relationships or social connection. And we know about the Harvard study, the longest longitudinal study in the world, which comes out over and over again with strong social connections and blue zones.

P: Yep.

M: So not only does make you happier, you lived longer. You don’t die [early].

P: That’s coming out in the health research that’s coming out as well. It’s all about the bio-social model.

M: Yep.

P: Not just being medical model, but it’s about the social influences and the environment that which you live and the connections that you’ve got in the support mechanisms that are around you. And this is coming out with all the research that’s coming through on global health studies.

M: And why there is such a concern from World Health Organisation and so many of the other global and national bodies, medical bodies about loneliness in particular and old age.

P: They’re finally recognising that that’s a real factor in the situational influences, which comes down to environment under the international classification of functioning, which was one of the big shifts in health going on the moment.

M: Absolutely, so if you want to raise that set point going after the newest and the latest, and the achievement is not the way to do that.

P: What is the way, Marie?

M: Social Connection, number one.

P: Yep.

M: Purpose and Meaning, we’ve said before.

P: Yep.

M: Again, why people who retire are often depressed within a year, and why people who lose their jobs quickly get depressed. There are so many examples of when purpose and meaning are taken away or abruptly stop that people decline very quickly.

P: So, is that about asking the question a little bit earlier in your life cycle? Not waiting until you retire to go, ‘oh, what do I really want to do?’

M: I think it’s about having a growth mindset. That’s the latest [thing] that everyone’s talking about. So that your never not learning and growing there’s a great quote, I have no idea who said it.

P: Laugh.

M: And it was, “I play the violin, I do art, I play soccer, blah blah blah… and the person says ‘Oh my gosh, you are so accomplished.’ They said, no, no, no, I don’t do any of them well, but I do them all.”

P: Laugh.

M: And that is it, it’s about learning new things. So if you learn a new skill every year and never master any of them. That’s just as good as spending your whole life trying to master something else that you’re passionate about.

P: Something that you’re passionate about at any level is good, and curiosity.

M: Yes, so that’s where the passion and meaning comes from. What really excites you and how can you spend your time? It could be gardening. It could be so many things it could be raising your kids or your grandkids. But, it’s having something that really gets you excited.

P: Hmm.

M: And then the last one, again, Healthy Mind and Body habits.

P: Oh, yes.

M: So, if you didn’t have that habit the other day of going to the gym and that commitment as well, which is good to your PT, you might have skipped out.

P: Yeah, definitely. Would’ve been so easy to go ‘I’m not going this morning because I’m too tired’, but because there was that routine, if you like, yeah [I did go].

M: Mmm hmm.

P: I’ve even done it on other days as well, where I’ve woken up, and …I guess it’s a throwback to the days of being a dancer. You wake up, you do class. That’s the first thing you do every single morning. And no matter how bad you feel, even when you’ve been out partying and you go to in the first Port de bras and first position, oy vey! Laugh. You soon feel better because you’re moving your body around, and it is routine that actually helps you a lot with that. It’s not motivation it’s habit.

M: Absolutely. So, that’s why we talked about that last one being about habits, the healthy mind and body. So lastly, what are the steps to help get off that Hedonic treadmill?

P: Oooh.

M: How do we get off this treadmill of needing to succeed and wanting more, more, more, more.

P: So more handstands!

M: Handstands are great, I like handstands.

P: Laugh! Is it about throwing something into the mix that isn’t normal, is that how you do it?

M: I think the first step is listening to our podcast right now.

P: Ha, ha!

M: Understanding that you’re on that treadmill.

P: Oooh, the self-confession.

M: It’s what we said with Socrates, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” So if this podcast has helped you do one thing, it’s to maybe look at whether you’re on that treadmill. Are you looking, as soon as you’ve got one thing, at what’s next? What’s next? What’s next? And working longer hours and harder to get your promotion and buy a new car and to get you nice holiday because everyone else had a nice holiday.

P: Yeah, yeah. My name is Peter Furness and I’m a hedonist, laugh! [on the hedonic treadmill]

M: Well, there can be balance, right? We don’t have to give it all up?

P & M: Laughter!

M: I’m not advocating for you to go live in a cardboard box on the street.

P: Laugh. Well, it’s interesting that when I first read the title on being the hedonistic treadmill, I was like, ‘This is going to be fabulous, it’s all about doing what you want and going against the grain and being flamboyant and you know.

M: This is me!

P: Yeah, laugh. Like running naked through the forest, all that sort of stuff.

M: Laugh.

P: I didn’t realise it was a bad thing, laugh.

M: Yeah, no… you don’t want to be, it’s, it’s the rat race, really.

P: Yeah.

M: We’re really talking, we’re really having a go at the rat race and consumerism.

P: And being distracted by that as well. It’s easy to buy into other people’s goals.

M: Yes.

P: What your goals are not necessarily going to match with what my goals are.

M: Mmm hmm.

P: Thankfully, they cross over a lot in terms of holidays and whatnot. But it’s recognising that… even your other half, even your significant other, if their goal is slightly different to yours, that’s okay, because as long as you both have passion involved, then somewhere the crossover can occur.

M: Yeah. And I think also understanding that generationally things change. For our grand parents who went through the Depression, securing your financial future was critical to survival.

P: Yeah.

M: In our world of over-abundance, it is not that important.

P: We also have more choice. Well, too much choice as we’ve talked about before.

M: Yep. And when we talk about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, our ability to secure our basic needs is so much easier in today’s society.

P: Yeah, and that’s getting better. The Global Burden of Disease study came out last year, – and I’m getting all this research is great!

M: Laugh.

P: The study revealed that from the years 2000 to 2010, we’ve done a really good job from the Millennium Statement, which was done in 2000 by the UN of reducing, poverty, reducing child malnourishment.

M: From the Global Sustainability Goals?

P: Yeah, that came from the same publication yeah. But we’ve done a really good job in there in terms of the SDI countries, the Social Demographic Index, basically the poorer nations, or what used to be called the underdeveloped nations or undeveloped nations. They’ve done a really good job in balancing out that inequality.

M: Yep, and you’ll find, there’s a great book by Hugh van Cuylenberg called The Resilience Project, and he went to India and then Nepal, and he spent some time in the Himalayas. And he said he met the poorest people he’s ever met. But they were also the happiest.

P: Mmm, yeah, yeah.

M: And, of course, they were poor but they had their basic needs met. So, just like we’re talking about here with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and you look at some high schools around Sydney, these kids that have it all –

P: Mmm hmm.

M: – and they’re nowhere near as happy as those kids in Nepal.

P: Yes, I have watched a wonderful Ted talk with a gentleman, I can’t remember his name, I have to put it in the notes. But he talks about the role of inequality in our society, and how that is damaging us and that we need to address that inequality and it is about happiness. In a sort of backwards loop, he talks about the health impacts, mainly of it coming through. But those top countries like America [U.S.], the amount of violence that is on the streets in America is hugely disproportionate when you look at other countries globally.

M: Mmm.

P: And he says that this is a direct result of lack of trust, of the lack of the fairness on how this is.

M: Yep.

P: It’s eroding our social fabric.

M: So, that is a great point as we start to wrap up.

So, the first thing you need to do to get off the hedonic treadmill is to understand that you’re on it.

The second thing is to stop comparing yourself to others. So even if you are in America [U.S.] and on minimum wage and life is not frickin fair. Being upset about it is not going to do you in your life any good.

P: Yeah, you’ve got to suck it up princess.

M: Unless you want to be miserable for your whole life; Then go for it, go be miserable. If you’ve got your basic needs met, you can put food on the table and you’re not under too much undue financial pressure, and a lot of people in the States are, and in Australia. But if you’ve got those basic needs met than constantly trying to keep up with the Joneses is only doing yourself a disservice.

P: Yep.

M: And so, when we talk about the hedonic treadmill that is the key to getting off it, stop comparing yourself to other people.

P: Find what’s true for you.

M: And then, lastly, re-focus on the things that will raise your set point.

  • The Social Connection;
  • Purpose and Meaning; and
  • Healthy mind and body habits.

P: And doing handstands.

M: Absolutely.

P: Laugh.

M: And on that note –

P: Handstand away, laugh!

M: Wishing you a happy week.

P: Still laughing!

[Happy exit music – background]

M: Thanks for joining us today if you want to hear more, please remember to subscribe and like this podcast and remember you can find us at www.marieskelton.com, where you can also send in questions or propose a topic.

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

M: Until next time.

M & P: Choose happiness.

[Exit music fadeout]

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

Emotional First Aid (E65)

by

Happiness for Cynics podcast

This week, Marie and Pete talk about recognising emotional trauma and how to apply emotional first aid to your psychological cuts and bruises.

Show notes

Transcript

[Happy intro music -background]

M: Welcome to happiness for cynics and thanks for joining us as we explore all the things I wish I’d known earlier in life but didn’t.

P: This podcast is about how to live the good life. Whether we’re talking about a new study or the latest news or eastern philosophy, our show is all about discovering what makes people happy.

M: So, if you’re like me and you want more out of life, listen in and more importantly, buy in because I guarantee if you do, the science of happiness can change your life.

P: Plus, sometimes I think we’re kind of funny.

[Intro music fadeout]

M: And we’re back!

P: Hi, hi, hi!

M: Hey.

P: Muz, how ya doing?

M: I am a bit frantic and frazzled this week.

P: Oh.

M: So I have, in response, upped up my physical exercise, I’ve been on the treadmill and just making sure I’m getting enough sleep. It’s just a busy time at work and with everything else. I’ve kind of got two jobs that I’m juggling.

P: Mmm, yes.

M: So, I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

P: Laugh.

M: I’m just so grateful to have such a full and satisfying life. But it’s just a bit busy at the moment. How about you?

P: I’m good, I’m good. I’m pumped and ready to go. I excited about this week’s episode because –

M: Because this one’s all you, isn’t it Pete?

P: It is.

M: What are we talking about?

P: Well, I led with that question. I was hoping you were going to say something else along the lines of, you know, my body’s a bit sore and I could go, ‘Oh, that’s great, I can fix that!’

M: Laugh.

P: Because I’m a sports therapist and I know what to do with broken bodies, But you brought up a really interesting point because you sAid frantic and frazzled and we’re talking about emotional First Aid this week. And when someone comes to you and says ‘I’m frantic, I’m frazzled’, it’s like …crickets.

M: Laugh, mmm hmm.

P: That not good, what are we doing for Sunday dinner?

M & P: Laughter.

P: Let’s move on, laugh.

M: Yep.

P: And the reason that we do this is because not many of us know how to deal with emotions or apply the First Aid for emotional First Aid.

M: And this is such an important topic. I Don’t know why it’s taken us a whole year to get to this. But we are encouraging people to do self-analysis and to understand their emotions and their triggers and emotional baggage and to work through it, whether by journaling or by talking to other people. Yet as a society, there are so many people out there who just freak out. They don’t know what to when someone says, ‘you know, I’m not doing so well.’

P: The change is in the winds though Marie, it is changing. We’re moving away for a biological biomedical health model. We’re now looking at the socio ecological model of health and that means we now GP’s pharmacists, all these health professionals are now taking into account social issues, people’s emotions. It has become a change and a shift and 100 years ago, this change and shift happened around physical health. All of a sudden we became aware that we have to take care of ourselves.

M: Mmm hmm.

P: We have to eat well. We have to, not imbibe in too much rich food otherwise we get gout and that brought about a 50% increase in life expectancy. This is 100 years ago and the person that will be referencing today, who is Dr Guy Winch, he talks about that at the moment we’re on a different bent in that were becoming aware of our emotional health.

M: Mmm hmm.

P: And people are now becoming more okay with the terminology around psychological health, mental well-being, understanding social equity and all these sorts of terms that 20 years ago, 40 years ago maybe we didn’t even know about. But now it’s so much more in our faces that’s being promoted so much more because this stuff has an impact on our mortality. If we don’t address this stuff, we die! Laugh!

M: We were saying that around here, don’t we?

P: We do! Laugh. We say it a lot.

M: It’s actually really topical because this month, May, is Mental Health Awareness Month in Australia, and I’m talking on a panel at my corporate gig in a week’s time. So I think I agree with you 100%. We are having these discussions in the corporate setting, as well, which is where a huge portion of our population work, not all of them by any means, but a large portion.

P: Yeah.

M: And corporate are also changing their language and driving change around this. They’re talking to older generations and men, people who traditionally have shunned a lot of this talk because they were tougher.

P: Yeah, it wasn’t accepted. It wasn’t encouraged in our society, for men, particularly to be in touch with their emotions. That’s out the window, now. That’s gone. The tough male model is gone, thank goodness.

M: Well… a lot of it.

P: Yeah.

M: We’re opening up the conversation. I think there’s still a long way to go, yeah.

P: The expectation, though there is now that boys are allowed to cry.

M: Yeah.

P: And that, that’s a good thing because, yes, it’s good to express our emotions. I’m referencing a very interesting psychologist this week from America, Guy Winch. Who some of you may know from his very famous Ted talk on emotional First Aid. He was interviewed as one of one of the First speakers for Being a Better Human, which is a new Ted talk series which is coming out. And his talk on emotional First Aid that he also go to Google was voted as one of the most popular Ted talks ever.

M: Hmm.

P: So reasonably well known. He’s published two books, one that we’re looking at today is his book on emotional thirst Aid, which is entitled The Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt and other everyday Psychological Injuries.

M: So is that –

P: Do you have any psychological injuries?

M: Oh my gosh yes! Who doesn’t?

P: Laugh.

M: My psychological damage is giving me a crick my neck. Seriously.

P: [Silly voice] Ay, I got such a crick in my neck, it is such a sunder!

M & P: Laughter!

M: I’ve even got a bag, thank you from Life School, which says emotional baggage.

P & M: Laughter!

P: But it’s true we all have emotional baggage.

M: And you’ve got to open it up and dig around in there sometimes –

P: Absolutely.

M: – because otherwise it drives you and drives your behaviours and reactions without you even realising it.

P: Exactly and when you listen to this guy’s talk, it’s amazing how much it drives. So we could take a few examples today. So let’s work through the main –

M: Well, before you get started. What do you mean by emotional First Aid?

P: Emotional First Aid is knowing how to apply a Band Aid to a psychological trauma. So if you’ve had a bad day at work and your boss has pulled you into a meeting and sAid that presentation that you gave last week was substandard, you didn’t address this, you didn’t address that, I’m really disappointed in your performance. I think you need to go away and actually have a think about this again before you present it again to the national forum on next week and for God’s sake, do a better job this time. How would that make you feel?

M: Didn’t even get a shit sandwich.

P: Laugh!

M: Just went straight for the kill. I’d be looking for a new boss of that’s how they do feedback.

P: Laugh!

M: But I’d also be feeling pretty crappy.

P & M: Laugh!

M: Now in the real world, corporate leaders are taught to compliment, deliver the hard stuff and then finish it with a compliment.

P: Yeah, I missed that one. I come from the art’s, it’s just cutthroat, Laugh. ‘That plier was shit, do it again!’

M & P: Laughter!

P: So, with those sorts of traumas, that’s as bad as a wound, that’s an emotional wound. So, your ego’s taken a hit, your self-esteem has taken a hit and you’re feeling pretty low. How do you address that?

M: How do you personally address it for you? Or how do you help friends and family and colleagues?

P: Let’s take the, let’s take the personal straight away because it is up to us to look after our own health.

M: Yep.

P: And, if I cut my finger when I was cooking, I’d know to wash it, put some Dettol on it and put a Band Aid on it because I don’t want it to get to get infected. We should have that same understanding when we have an emotional wound. So, if someone tells us we’re crap, we should have immediate steps in place that we know that was a hit to my ego. So now I need to go and do some self-esteem work, however minor or free it is, or do something that’s good for myself. Rather than going and finding a bowl of ice cream and eating it all in one go, opening up the wine bottle –

M: [Longing Sigh] Oh…

P: – or going and doing some retail therapy.

M: Can we do both?

P: Laugh. That’s the point. These things are not emotional Band Aids. They don’t help the injury, they waylay it.

M: No, but if you feel good in the moment, laugh!

P: They smother it. They push it down and Guy Winch –

M: Are they part of a holistic strategy, you know, multi-pronged attack, laugh!

P: No, no. I’m going to say no.

M: Darn it, alright.

P & M: Laughter!

P: Because they just suppress the issue. So high carb – sugar rush. So it releases endorphins in your system and you don’t think about the injury. Alcohol suppresses all the all the emotions. The problem with alcohol and Doctor Winch uses this example is it’s going to come back up.

M: Laugh.

P: They’re going to vomit that alcohol back up. So, it’s really important that we have more fundamentally beneficial First Aid approaches when we have a psychological trauma.

Let’s take something like failure.

So failure is a psychological wound.

M: Yes.

P: When you fail at something, you’re not feeling good.

M: I never fail.

P: Oohhh…?

M & P: Laughter!

M: I just don’t do things that I’m going to fail at.

P & M: Laugh!

M: That’s why. No, I lie, I lie. I’ve had some shocking failures in my life.

P: Yeah, and you’ve gotta bounce back from those. So what we’re talking about here is the way that failure registers with us the mind tricks us into not being able to function and do the simplest tasks. Things like going and doing the washing, going to the fridge and getting the milk out of the fridge and you drop it and it falls on the floor and you end up in a puddle of a mess because you’ve had a hard day.

M: Laugh.

P: Those sort of simple tasks we can’t do when we have failure because our cognition and our ability to just coordinate is impacted by our emotion. The mind is a hard thing to change once it’s been convinced that it’s a failure. So, if someone says your shit, then it’s really hard to actually bring yourself up going ‘No, I’m not’; unless you’ve got really good self-esteem in the first place, it’s really hard to go ‘No, I’m not shit, I have these qualities, and I can do this, and this, and this, and this, and that’s going to make you feel better and that is an emotional Band Aid.

M: I’ve actually seen people with failure, baggage and the huge impact can have on their happiness levels.

P: Definitely.

M: They’re going to operate in society and at the smallest challenges they run away rather than step up and learn or grow or fight.

P: Mmm, yep.

M: And it’s such a limiting thing to carry around in your emotional baggage.

P: Absolutely, definitely and it doesn’t have to be a big failure. It can be a small failure if can happened when you were a teenager.

M: Mmm hmm.

P: That informs so much of your developmental understanding. And this in a psychological wound, so we have to know how to take that up and take care of it and let it heal. So there are different things that we can do.

M: Also, failure is part of life, right?

P: It is.

M: Let’s be really honest. So when kids experience failure, it’s about helping them to develop the tools to pick themselves up and try again, rather than trying to stop them from experiencing that failure because experiencing it is still so important.

P: Yes, so much.

M: And we found with the latest generation of parents who stereotypically have over parented and tried to protect their kids. And they’ve gone in and fought with the teacher who gave them the B, so they could get an A.

P: Mmm, yeah.

M: And all of those things, have had arguments with the coach who benched them, and these kids have never learned to fail.

P: Exactly.

M: And they hit the real world.

P: And they can’t cope.

M: Parents can’t go in to bat for them to get the promotion, laugh.

P: Absolutely, definitely.

M: And they buckle at the first sign of any pressure because they’re not used to stepping up in the face of that.

P: Yeah, I’ve got a great example from when I was doing my study when I was a massage therapist and I knew my nutrition lecturer really well. We were friends. We were colleagues. And we went out for dinner one night and she said,

‘Oh, so we have the test on Monday, are you ready?

And I’m like ‘No! I haven’t been able to study!’

And she goes ‘That’s ok. I’ll just throw you a question. Why don’t we eat meat when we’re unwell?’

And I just sat there going ‘I don’t know!

M: Laugh!’

P: And Kirsty looked at me and said ‘It’s okay Pete, it’s alright.’ She said it’s because we don’t want iron in our system because that’s what the bacteria feeds off when we’re ill. We don’t want iron in our system.

M: I just learned something?

P: Exactly. And do you know what? I have never forgotten that conversation since 15 years ago. So now whenever it comes up I’m like ‘ah, we don’t eat meat when we’re sick!’

M & P: Laugh!  

P: It’s stuck in my brain.

M: I’m betting the science has changed since then, now we have to eat meat, laugh.

P: Oh, I’m sticking with it because I had an emotional response.

M: Yep.

P: And It triggered a memory in me, and it happened a couple weeks ago in uni. I’ve got the same thing, I got something wrong. I will now always know that DALY always stands for disability-adjusted life years.

M: Laugh.

P: So it’s there, you had those emotional responses, they are a step to learning. Let’s take one more example.

Let’s look at something which is really fun, ruminating.

The brooder, we all know a brooder, don’t we?

M: We need to redefine your definition of fun.

P: Laugh! A person who sits there and creates and thinks some things through endlessly. This is a real risk of psychological trauma because it puts you in that cycle again, and it doesn’t let you come up with any solutions again that’s not exercising the right kind of brain waves that allows you to achieve tasks that affects your work ethic and affects your achievement scales, it affects your self-worth. Because you’re not seeing any positivity coming out of a situation, you start fantasising. You start creating situations that are never going to happen. You know ‘the FBI are going to come from a chimney at night and gag me and take me away because I didn’t put the toilet seat down.

M: Are you fantasising? Or ruminating? Laugh!

P: Well, that’s the thing. One thing leads to another. That’s a serious example, though.

M: I think in a way we’ve covered this in the past with conversations about gratitude and how we’re actually wired to see the negative. The person who noticed the tiger that was stalking them was more likely to live than the guy who was skipping through the daisy field oblivious to the, you know, the threat, right? So, we’re wired, biologically wired to look for the negative, and that can really lead down a really bad path if you don’t stop it.

P: Yeah.

M: And so a really great way again to counter act that, is to bring a gratitude practise into your daily life.

P: Definitely.

M: It is so simple and easy. And it helps you to scan your environment for positives.

P: Mmm.

M: And balance that out, and might even to a certain degree, depending on what your brooding or ruminating on might even short circuit a lot of that behaviour and retrain your brain to not ruminate.

P: Science says you are right, Marie.

M & P: Laugh!

M: How about that, laugh.

P: Dr Winch talks about it in terms of adaptive versus maladaptive, so self-reflection can be maladaptive. When you become a ruminator and your self-reflecting and you go down that negative cycle and you keep looking for the negatives that’s maladaptive reasoning and that has powerful affect because it leads to alcoholism, eating disorders, increased cortisol and cardiovascular disease, so the science says, I’m not going to quote any studies because we’re running out of time. He calls it picking at emotional scabs.

You’re not letting something heal because you keep driving a knife into the wounds going ‘Yeah, let’s put this knife in deeper and see how deep it can go.’ Whereas adaptive reasoning is exactly what you’re talking about, Marie. It’s taking some time to be positive and do some real work around, trying to bring yourself up and bring yourself out of that brooding, only seeing the negative cycle.

M: There’s a great course that life line used to run called Accidental Counsellor, which I took last year, actually, and it teaches people who may be caught off guard who are not mental health professionals how to have conversations and support friends, colleagues, people at work, customers even who’ve come out with, you know, some really tough, tough disclosures at times.

P: Yeah

M: And if you’re not prepared for it or equipped, what do you say? How do you support that person and give them what they need? But then, also on the flip side, how do you not give them too much advice or coaching because you’re not the professional, right?

P: Exactly.

M: And one of the great things that we learned in that session was that you can be there for someone too much.

P: Hmm.

M: If you’re letting them talk too much, and they’re in that ruminating space, and all they’re doing is just reinforcing the negative. There comes a time where, you know, as the friend who’s supporting you need to say, ‘enough’s enough, this isn’t working. This is ruminating.’

P: This is brooding and it’s not beneficial.

M: I’m supporting you.

P: Yeah, and I’m enabling you to do more of it. Someone has to come in at some point and cut that that process off. Otherwise, we get so many health risks coming forward.

M: Yeah, so it’s not just with yourself, but with friends who may be going through a tough time. You can listen and listen and listen. And that is the number one recommendation out of this course for how to help people who are going through tough times. Listen.

P: Yeah.

M: Sit and listen and validate what they’re feeling, but there comes a point where you need to stop listening and move them to a professional or even extricate yourself out in the right way.

P: And you can do that on yourself as well, you can, listen, listen and listen to yourself talk, but there comes a point where you going ‘Right, enough’s enough. Let’s take, take some action. And if that action is going getting some professional help then that’s great, because getting that is a positive step we’re taking action.

M: Yep.

P: I know we’re pushed for time,

but I do want to mention one more, rejection.

This is a psychological trauma, which a lot of people go through, it can be rejection from a job. It can rejection from a lover. It could be rejection from a date. I mean, who hasn’t gone on a date and have someone get up in the first ten minutes and say ‘Sorry, I’m out.’ It’s like, Oh my God, I feel terrible. [Sad laugh]

M: Is that common?

P: Not if you’re married. Laugh.

M: Well, I’ve been married for 15 years. [actually, 9 years this December]

P & M: Laughter!

P: Online dating. We have so much interaction on an online sphere, and then you go and meet the person and you realise, oh my God, they’re completely not who I thought they were and I actually have nothing in common with this person.

M: Mmm.

P: So people will back out in five minutes flat.

M: Which I think is fine, but you can deliver that message in a more sensitive way, laugh.

P: Absolutely. So, let’s look at that feeling of rejection.

M: Mmm hmm.

P: Now, it’s interesting. The science behind this was done using a ball game. So, I’m number one, Marie you’re number two, let’s make Francis number three. I throw the ball to you, you throw the ball to Francis, and Francis throws the ball to me.

Then halfway through this, we keep doing it, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la; And then all of a sudden, Francis throws the ball back to you, and then you throw to Francis and Francis throws it back to you. Then all of a sudden, I’m standing there going ‘no one’s throwing me the ball’. That’s going to make me feel rejected. It’s going to make me feel ostracised.

M: Piggy in the middle!

P: Laugh! As a piggy though, I’m active cause I’m trying to catch the ball. This, I’m not even involved in the ball game anymore because you guys have decided to keep it between the two of you.

M: Yep.

P: So what they did was they took some MRI scans of the person who was feeling these feelings of rejection. What they found was the pathways, the neural pathways that activated during the feelings of rejected mimic the pain pathways that we experience when we are in physical pain.

The reason behind this, when we were running around in tribes, as nomads we needed to make sure that we were part of the clan. Otherwise, we died. Literally, we could not survive as a solo human being in the wild because something would eat us or we wouldn’t be able to get enough food.

So the body developed this in our evolutionary history. This process to let us know something is wrong. We’re going to make you feel pain because you need to get involved with the group again.

M: Mmm hmm.

P: And that’s a lever, that’s creating something that makes us go back to the group. And it’s really important because it can be as simple as a ball game and it can leave someone feeling out. And if we don’t act on that, if we don’t know to recognise that as ‘I’m being excluded, somehow I have to find a way to connect back in with the group’, then we are left feeling ostracised and it results in trauma such as cardiovascular disease, increased cortisol levels, all those things that we’ve talked about in terms of chronic illness and inflammatory responses which have a physical impact on our body.

M: There’s a great book called The 10 Types of Human by Dexter Dias, and he talks about this study [similar to above], and it was actually done on the beach with people playing Frisbee.

P: Laugh.

M: They talk about how this relates to other animals that are social and pack animals as well, there’s some great stories in there. But it is a biological and physiological response about rejection.

P: Yep, definitely. We don’t like it, it’s not just humans, it’s other animals as well.

M: Yep.  

P: But we don’t like it, and it’s not good for us. So, learning to identify that and applying the processes of being able to go, that’s an emotional wound, let’s address it, helps to keep us healthy and better and living longer.

M: So you’ve got a few others here, loneliness and guilt, and we’re out of time. But to wrap up the conversation, I guess, on emotional First Aid, what we’ve done is talked about some of the things that can really lead us down a path of lifelong injuries, mental injuries that we carry with us and into our relationships and everything we do and really what you’re saying here Pete, if I can maybe parrot it back, is that we need to be better at identifying that and short circuiting that.

P: Absolutely.

M: Exploring it, picking at it, but not too much.

P: Yep, laugh. Don’t pick the scab.

M: Yep, laugh.

P: This goes into something that we can talk about later, which is this whole idea we came up with of emotional literacy like we have health literacy, there’s happiness, literacy, there’s emotional literacy. We need to know it and it’s identifying those markers and going ‘ah, this is loneliness, this is what we do for loneliness.’ We need to be better at that. And maybe we can talk about this in another episode about the tips behind how we can address that.

M: Yep.

P: Maybe that’s a different episode that we can do.

M: Sounds good, all right. On that note, we’ll definitely put Guy Winches Ted talk in our show notes for everyone.

P: Yeah.

M: And I’m going to go have a read of that because I haven’t yet, laugh.

P: Yeah, it’s really interesting, he presents it in a really interesting way with some great anecdotes and stories.

M: Love it. All right, well, that’s all we have time for this week. We’ll see you next week.

P: Till next time.

M: Bye.

P: Bye.

[Happy exit music – background]

M: Thanks for joining us today if you want to hear more please remember to subscribe and like this podcast and remember you can find us at www.marieskelton.com, where you can also send in questions or propose a topic.

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

M: Until next time.

M & P: Choose happiness.

[Exit music fadeout]

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