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What makes you optimistic? – Interview with Victor Perton (E102)

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Happiness for Cynics podcast

This week Marie interviews Victor Perton the founder of The Centre for Optimism, who asks the question, what makes you optimistic? 

Show notes

The Centre for Optimism – Victor Perton (Founder and Chief Optimism Officer)

We ask “what makes you optimistic?”

We believe the times call for realistic and infectiously optimistic leaders. We are a movement supporting realistic and infectiously optimistic leaders to be beacons in the fog of pessimism and cynicism. We believe the leader is the person in your mirror.

Transcript

M: Thanks for joining us on Happiness for Cynics. Today I’m here with Victor Person, who is the Chief Optimism Officer at the Centre for Optimism. The offspring of stateless refugees from the Baltics, Victor’s early working years were spent in the law, politics and public policy, culminating in 18 years in the Victorian Parliament. 

After politics, Victor worked as Commissioner to the Americas working across North and South America on Foreign Direct Investment and Export Promotion.  This was followed by service as Senior Advisor to the Australian G20 Presidency. 

Returning to Melbourne, Victor was surprised by the negativity around Australian leadership and increasing levels of anxiety and depression in our community.   

This led to the founding of The Australian Leadership Project and, after a eureka moment at the Global Integrity Summit 2017, the founding of its offspring, The Centre for Optimism, which has grown through COVID with 5000 members in 82 countries. 

Today Victor’s work centres on asking people the question “What makes you Optimistic? 

M: Well, I will start by saying welcome to Happiness for Cynics. Welcome to the show and it is such a pleasure to have you here. I’ve been watching from up in Sydney and wondering why all the great positive psychologists and optimist leaders and happiness leaders are all down in Melbourne. What’s going on down there, Victor?

V: It’s because people dress in black.

M: Laugh.

V: Tommy Hilfiger said ‘If only Melbourne women would put a little dash of yellow or orange on, doesn’t matter whether it’s earrings or a necklace. So, we’re so surrounded by black and whenever I go to Sydney, I’m amazed on the streets, you know, ladies wearing white suits and white dresses. And I think that’s the difference between Sydney and Melbourne, you’ve got that warmer climate, the humidity. We’ve got to find the happiness in a colder climate.

M: Mmm hmm. Well, it’s definitely working. Maybe we need a bit more black and we can borrow some of the Melbourne experts you have there. So, thank you for joining us. I’d like to start by digging a little bit into your journey if you’re willing to share and letting the snow how you became a proponent of optimism and what led you personally to this life philosophy?

V: Yeah, sure. So, it really… when I’m waxing lyrical, um, it really goes back three or four generations. So, my parents were refugees from Latvia and Lithuania.

And I’m a stereotype, if you actually have a look at all of the research, the most optimistic people in any country are the refugees and the Children of refugees.

And there was a University of Melbourne study that reported a couple of years ago that said that the kids of refugees in Australia 90% of them felt they belonged. 88% of them were confident about their future profession, compared to 55% of native-born Children.

M: Mmm hmm.

V: So, I’m that stereotype. And if I go back to that generation of my grandparents. My grandfather, he was a soldier in World War One, he had gone to Saint Petersburg in 1905, he helped to build a country. And in 1940 he was captured by the Soviets and tortured to death. My grandmother was sent to the gulag with her daughter and, you know, 12 years in the gulag, and then when you come back from the gulag, you’re black marked, people don’t like you.

M: Mmm.

V: But in 1987 she said to me, come over I’m going to the first rally of … and she said, “Look, I’m going to outlive communism.”

M: Laugh.

V: And you know this woman, a woman who’s been in the gulag. She’s in a walking frame. But she took part in the million hands across Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and in 1991 of course, she not only lived to see the end of communism but celebrated the end of communism. So, she was a great example to me, almost in some senses, that we go to [Viktor] Frankl’s, Man’s Search for Meaning.

M: Mmm.

V: You know, she’s almost the stereotype. And then my other grandparents, you know, my grandfather had gone through the Depression, had built a business [and in] 1940 everything [was] seized by the Soviets, arrives in Australia, working in a factory, but never complained.

M: No.

V: Never complained. And then my father died when I was pretty young. My mother worked three jobs. She died in October last year, teaching yoga for 51 years.

M: Wow.

V: And again, you know, always the optimist, always lifting other people. And a week before she died, she said to me, “Victor, you’ve done lots of interesting things in your life, but this asking people what makes them optimistic, you’ve never done anything more important.”

So, on this personal journey, I was in politics for 18 years, and in 2006 I could just feel Australian politics becoming ever more negative.

M: Mmm hmm.

V: And it just wasn’t filling me full of joy anymore. So, I quit. And then out of the blue, the other side of politics asked me to go to America as Trade Investment Commissioner, working across North and South America. And everywhere I went, there was this astonishing positive stereotype of Australians and Australian leadership, and our work was made easier by that one chairman of a major corporation who said to me, “Victor, you Aussies remind me of the Americans of 100 years ago. Nothing is impossible.”

M: Mmm hmm.

V: The truck driver who would hear your accent on Route 66 would say, “Oh my God, I love that Fosters of yours!”

M: Laugh.

V: And so, you know, the work was easy, you know, through that positive stereotype. And then after that, I worked on the Australian presidency of the G 20.

M: Mmm hmm.

V: And at that super elite level of Presidents, Prime Ministers, Finance Ministers, Central Bank Governors, it was exactly the same. You know, this complete trust in us as Australians and then I came back to Melbourne in 2015 and I know I had changed, you know, from living in San Francisco. Flowers and what was left in my hair –

M: Laugh.

V: – and dancing in the street as the Mamas and the Papas would recommend. But something had also changed in Australia, and I was astonished by the negativity of language. You know, you say, “How are you?” and 65% of people say not bad or not too bad. And we never say Oh my God, what’s wrong?

M: Mmm hmm.

V: It’s a sort of negative take and the news had moved from 50-50 good/bad, to 95% bad. You know, this 24 by seven assault on the brain. And then when you ask people about leadership in a country where real incomes have grown 30%, we’re a peaceful country, a healthy country, this scoffing about leadership –

M: Mmm hmm.

V: – just astonished me and I, you know, scoffing about political leadership, you do it. And even in China and North Korea, people have got jokes about politicians. But here was this deeper antipathy towards leadership.

M: Yep.

V: So, we started the Australian Leadership Project and we interviewed 2500 people on the qualities of Australian leadership and the science, and our research showed that the three qualities are:

  • Egalitarianism,
  • Self-effacing humour, and
  • No bullshit.

Plain speaking.

M: Mmm hmm.

V: Now when you and I think of our circles, we know hundreds of people like that.

M: Absolutely.

V: We could probably walk down Pitt Street, Sydney or Collins Street, Melbourne and still be hitting 50% of people with those qualities.

M: Mmm hmm.

V: So, at the end of the project, I was still left bewildered at why people were so negative. And then I was fortunate enough to be on the final panel of the Global Integrity Summit in 2017.

And my eureka moment came. It’s actually not so much the leadership, it’s the fog of pessimism.

M: Yeah.

V: Hence my pursuit. And you know, your listeners can’t see the posters behind me, but they are light houses.

I realised what we needed to foster, were beacons of optimism in the fog of pessimism.

That’s a long answer to a simple question, but I often say to people it goes back four generations of, of suffering, of resilience and coming through at the end because of it.

M: I will never, ever stop a long answer that is as engaging as what you just gave us. So, thank you and thank you for sharing your history as well as optimistic as you’ve made it. There’s a lot of hard times in there as well. So, I think there’s a lot to be said for people who’ve grown up in Australia and who haven’t had those hard times and who are still struggling for ways to be thankful and find optimism versus when we talk about post traumatic growth as well as being a good catalyst for finding happiness and optimism.

V: Marie, I did a radio interview during Covid, and the journalist said, you know, “Australian business has never had it this tough.” And I said, “Give me a break!”

M: Laugh.

V: Thinking about Australian business, people have lost their business in bushfires, people have lost their business in floods. All the refugees, you know, whether they’re Iraqi or Somali, who lost their businesses blown up.

M: Mmm hmm.

V: You know there’s lots of people and we need to tap their wisdom, tap their experience because they have then come to Australia, and they’ve built the country.

M: Mmm hmm. Absolutely.

So, is it just leaders that need this kick up the butt with optimism or is it all Australians? I know you focus on leaders but do all of us need to really take a step back?

V: This was a great debate with my mother and me for almost 30 years.

M: Laugh.

V: Because I, in all my speeches, I tell people to go and graffiti their mirror. So, everyone who is listening if you use red lipstick, it’s really ideal. If you can borrow red lipstick, it’s good, but if not a marker pen, go and write on the mirror at work in the toilet, mens/ladies, ‘The leader looks like the person in your mirror.’

So that’s my philosophy that everyone’s got to lead at some point now. Now my mother’s view was always, you know, sort of to be a good leader, you need good followers. Where, as I say, it’s everyone. And it’s one of the really interesting parts of the research. You know, when you use the word leader in Australia, it’s often a ‘them’.

M: Mmm hmm.

V: The word boss actually, is more resonant here. If you want to ask people about leadership at work, using the word leadership actually doesn’t seem to resonate in Australia as it does in the United States or Canada, you know where a lot of these books are written, leadership and self-leadership. Here, there’s a nuance of language, where leadership is them, not us. So, for me, the Centre for Optimism came out of the Australian leadership project, and someone who put it really well for me was Dominic Barton, who was then the head of McKinsey and now the Canadian ambassador to China had to negotiate the release of the Canadian hostages who were being held for the Huawei executive. And he said to me,

“Every great leader I have ever met is infectiously optimistic. But it’s not the big man or woman standing at the front of the stage. It’s the person who can unlock the optimism in the team from the youngest to the oldest from the least experienced to the most experienced.” [Dominic Barton]

V: I was actually in Sydney, I was having a coffee by circular key at six in the morning, and, you know, there’s not so much company and there was this other bloke reading the paper on the table next to me. You know, I’m a bit chatty and garrulous, so he wasn’t reading his paper three minutes later.

M: Laugh.

V: But he was from Singapore, and we got talking about the impact of optimism and he said, “Look, every Monday morning, I give my sales team a rev up speech, and by Monday afternoon it seems to have worn off”, and I said to him, “Have you ever asked them what makes them optimistic?”

M: Mmm hmm.

V: And in fact, he took it on board. And every month now, the start of the sales meeting on the first day of the month is, ‘what makes you optimistic?’ And the funny little nuance. I did an event for Saint Ives Rotary a couple of days before we recorded this on the North Shore of Sydney, and there was a scientist there who talked about his experience, and he had been a teacher, and when he left teaching, he moved into an educational institution helping salespeople. And it was that classic Seligman sorry where he was actually driven nuts by the optimistic belief of the salesman.

M: Mmm hmm.

V: But he said the more optimistic the salesman was, the more they kept confounding him by being right.

M: Laugh.

V: When they come back, having met the unrealistic sales figures they’ve given them at the beginning of the month. So, for me, it is everyone.

M: Mmm hmm.

V: But it’s complicated, and particularly in Australian language, where leadership is sort of them and oftentimes conflated with political leadership.

M: Yeah.

V: So, if you ask people, what do Australians want of their leaders? I’ve really got to give an explanation that says, well, I’m actually thinking of your boss or your manager rather than the Prime Minister.

M: Mmm hmm. You’ve touched on language differences in Australia. Are there any other differences from a cultural point of view in Australia when it comes to optimism? You know, I talk about how we’re optimistically cynical as a bunch, laugh. I won’t say that we’re necessarily not optimistic, but we are a cynical bunch, and we like to have a bit of a gripe at times. And you know, we have that tall poppy syndrome that everyone talks about as well. Is there anything that is stopping us as a country from being more optimistic?

V: Well, it’s actually going backwards, we’re actually regressing. It’s a bit like our maths results. We’re actually regressing. So, in a country that has so much so if you have measured optimism in Australia, both optimism for self and optimism for country. Twenty years ago, in 2000, Australia and our sister country, New Zealand, were the two most optimistic countries in the Western world. Today we are down around the middle. It’s actually going backwards, and there’s some really concerning statistics around. We were talking earlier about mental illness.

M: Mmm hmm.

V: The Victorian Royal Commission into Mental Health Treatment, published a statistic that showed that we have doubled the rate of medicated anxiety and depression since 2016. Now if that’s happening in Victoria, it’s happening in New South Wales as well. Now, are doctors prescribing medication for the ordinary anxieties of life. You know, grief, loss of job, the teenagers are driving me nuts, or the teenager is being driven nuts.

M: Laugh.

V:  So, are we medicating stuff? So, if we look at that that deeper Australian culture, if we look in the colonial period and you know that the settlement you know, the choice of people who came here originally were the prisoners and the political prisoners. So, what mindset did they have? Look, if there’s one thing they brought with them it was humour.

M: Mmm hmm.

V: Laconic humour, which I often refer to as self-effacing. But there’s a friend of mine runs a company called, John Cole runs Team Leadership in Washington. He says Australian humour is so dry that Americans don’t even understand you’re telling a joke.

M: Mmm hmm.

V: You know, they think you’re having a go at them or you’re having a go at yourself and “Oh, my God, what’s wrong with you that you can tell this joke against you?”

M: Laugh.

V: So Australian humour, similar to New Zealand humour, but there’s a uniqueness about it. We have not… On the verge of doing a project on Aboriginal optimism because when you think, you know, living 30,000, 40,000, however many years it was in this tough land.

M: Mmm hmm.

V: You know, tasting new foods, adapting to new foods and alike. You know, there must have been a lot of optimism in the Aboriginal community as they settled this land. And so too for the Europeans and the Asians who came here post 1788, a lot of adaption. And so, my mother describes it, you know, they came here as refugees, you know, and, you know, they were ribbed mercilessly. My father’s original surname was Petronitis, right?

M: Mmm hmm.

V: Of course, he got ribbed mercilessly about peritonitis.

M: Laugh.

V: And ultimately, you know, before I was born, changed the name to Perton.

M: Mmm hmm.

V: But again, it was an affection, you know, people actually liked it. So, you know, those Australian characteristics of egalitarianism and plain speaking and dry humour, as you call it, is very attractive to people.

M: Mmm hmm.

V: And you know. I came back and I was a bit bewildered by the negativity of language, much of which is, I think, to be blamed on the news. You know, we just get this 24 by seven assault on our well-being by being told we’re hopeless.

M: Mmm hmm. Social media is just an echo chamber for that as well, unfortunately.

I’m really keen to understand, we’ve talked about immigrants and resilient Aussies, and we do talk about resilience quite a bit as well and bonding Australians together. But do you think that maybe we’ve had it too good for the last few decades? Is that why we’re losing that self-effacing humour or that resilience? Or that… the optimism? Is that perhaps part of it? Life has become too easy.

V: Yeah, and there’s some really interesting work that’s been done by UNICEF and others and even the Dalai Lama. I was fortunate to be in an audience with him seven weeks ago. This younger generation, these teenagers may be the most resilient generation since World War II, because I’ve actually been locked up.

M: Mmm hmm.

V: They’ve actually been under threat from a disease that threatened to wipe out hundreds of thousands of people. So, those kids may in fact be the most resilient for a long time. And you know, I had someone talking to me yesterday about this problem that in Australian business and American business that from really 1990 onwards you were in constant growth.

M: Mmm hmm.

V: You could write a budget and you would always hit it.

M: Yep.

V: Because the country was getting there. What was interesting was, I’m sorry, that person was talking about America [USA], because America got hit by the GFC in 2008. But Australia didn’t.

M: Yep, we didn’t.

V: And the extraordinary thing was, you know, the Australian media talking about the GFC as if it was something terrible. But in fact, Australia never stopped growing. So yes, so we’ve had it too easy. And this notion that there’s always something wrong, there’s nothing wrong with being self-critical.

M: Mmm hmm.

V: There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be better. But when everything the government does, or everything a corporation does, is analysed for the bad news. The zeitgeist of our contemporary news services is as pessimistic and miserable.

M: Yep, yep.

V: You look at the Australian News services now, you know, if there’s a good news story, it runs once. Remember recently there was a debate about, ‘we’ve stopped flights from India because of the Covid outbreak in India’, and it was just out of control. And they interviewed the head of the Indian community in Melbourne.

M: Yep.

V: And they said, what do you think? And she said, “Well, make sense to me! –

M: Laugh.

V: – if India is going through, you know, an absolute plague of covid, and we can’t work out who’s got it. I’d stop the flights too.” Well, of course, that interview never got repeated.

M: Well, the poor journalist was like, ‘Oh, this isn’t news anymore.’ Laugh.

V: Yeah! Well, they managed to find other people who said that the government was stupid –

M: Mmm hmm.

V: – and this was racist and xenophobic, and those are the people that ran.

M: Yep.

V: Rather than the logical leader of the Indian community who said, “Makes sense to me as an Indian Australia.”

M: So, we’ve talked about all the negativity out there and how that is obviously linked to Australia’s decrease in optimism. The answer, it seems, is that we all need to bring a bit more optimism into our lives, and we all need to be asking the question and leading when it comes to optimism. But what do you say to people who are afraid of or fight against toxic positivity?

V: Every time I see an article on toxic positivity, it’s someone trying to sell the negativity industry.

M: Mmm hmm.

V: You know, it’s actually a nonsense term. The only person I think who really gets it is David Kessler, and I’ll quote him exactly.

“Toxic positivity is positivity, given in the wrong way in the wrong dose at the wrong time.” [- David Kessler]

V: So, three factors.

M: Mmm hmm.

V: Right? And, you know and so, for instance, the Centre for Optimism.

The science says, look, what really benefits your health? What really benefits your leadership? What should underpin strategy, innovation and resilience is realistic and infectiously optimistic leadership.

So, for most of the population, positive thinking does work, and that’s why we have a project on grief and optimism. But one of our members, it is a mother whose son was killed in a car crash.

M: Yeah.

V: Another member at the Centre for Optimism is a woman who has conducted hundreds of funerals as the celebrant. And so, when we do our guide to grief and optimism, we say, look, you know the optimist when they’re comforting someone listens.

M: Mmm hmm.

V: You know. And if the person says something positive, you help to reinforce it. If they say something negative, you listen to it. And there’s a brilliant book which has inspired lots of other authors in the last couple of years, and I recommend to all of your readers is Hans Rosling’s, Factfulness.

M: I haven’t read that one. It’s not on my bookshelf.

V: It’s F-a-c-t-f-u-l-n-e-s-s, and he’s really interesting. So, when he writes about journalists, he says, don’t be angry at journalists for writing negatively or pessimistically. It’s their lens. It’s their world frame, you know, they are sent out to catch a story that’s a gotcha.

M: Mmm hmm.

V: If it’s a prime minister or, you know, if it’s a drug scandal at a football club, you know it’s not the good stuff. And if I summarise his position, he says, most of us have a worldview that’s based on what our Grade four teacher taught us. So, when we think of world hunger, or we think of Ireland for instance, we did and hour of optimism on Ireland recently.

M: Mmm hmm.

V: And you know, when I think of Ireland, you know, I think of the land that sent away millions of migrants to America and Australia from the potato famine or British colonial rule. And yet you know that Ireland is now number two on the United Nations Development Index. Right?

M: Laugh.

V: But it’s this red hot, high tech, egalitarian society, you know, we’re average lifespans have increased, you know, 30 years and absolutely fantastic country. But, you know, my stereotype of Ireland is still, you know, the Irish nuns.

M: Laugh.

V: You know, who left Ireland to come to Australia to teach us and the other person who really I love on this is Steven Pinker.

M: Yep.

V: The head of Psychology at Harvard, and I don’t remember what it was in his book, Enlightenment [Now], or one of his interviews. But he said, “Anyone who remembers a wonderful past has got a really short memory.”

M: Laugh

V: You know, you go back 100 years, and you look at infant mortality rates and, you know, women dying in childbirth and people even in Melbourne and Sydney, dying of cholera and waterborne diseases. And even we did an event the other day for Central Africa. Even if you look at the advances in Central Africa, all we see on the Australian News is someone being blown up or, you know, girls or boys being kidnapped from a school. But in fact, you know there are great centres of innovation and new tech in Lagos and Nairobi and great things happening.

M: Not everything is like the Simpsons portrays it, right?

P: I’m not a big fan of the Simpsons. I’m a simpler man. I’m a more you know, Mister Ed. And you know, my favourite book is still The Magic Far Away Tree, and The Enchanted Wood by Enid Blyton and kids should be studying humour to laugh, shouldn’t they?

M: Yeah.

V: They should be studying poetry, to love beautiful poetry. But we’ve now got… Critical analysis has almost replaced the Bible as the font for education.

M: I will throw in. There is another Melbourne based group called Future Crunch that I am such a fan of who tell the happy news. And I make sure that they’re part of my news cycle on a regular basis because they pull together for those out there who don’t know them. They pull together the best news around the world, the progress that we’re making and is so heart-warming to put that against the normal news that we read and see that we are making huge strides in so many areas of human rights and the environment, and that it’s not all doom and gloom.

V: Yeah, but everyone can do that. I mean, we had a Future Crunch of great friends of ours, and we’ve had them on our show. But everyone can be a Future Crunch.

M: Mmm hmm.

V: You know, if there’s something good happening in your workplace or in your neighbourhood, you don’t need to wait for the newspaper to publish it, take a photo or do a two-minute interview of the person.

We went out to a town called Kaniva, in the West Wimmera. And it’s a town that’s got so many things running against it, you know, it’s a highway town. They’ve had the shutdowns. They’ve been stuck with South Australian refugees who can’t get across the border, the last bank branch is closing, because there was no highway traffic. The favourite cafe is closing. But you know, Marie, I went door knocking in that town, and I asked people, what makes you optimistic? And they ended up getting kids to do little videos, two-minute videos of what makes them optimistic about Kaniva.

And then we were going to have a town dinner and I was to be the guest speaker and, of course, what happened in the soviet socialist state of Victoria. We got locked down. I couldn’t go and be the guest speaker. So, I said, “Well, I trust you guys. You do it.”

M: Mmm hmm.

V: And they had 12 locals as the guest speaker, and at the end of the dinner they declared themselves to be the most optimistic town in Australia.

M: I love that story, I really do.

V: Every person out there listening, make this your homework today, so I’ll jump ahead of your last question. So, I’ll give you another hint, Marie, because you’re an expert on this. But what I would love everyone to think about is change your greeting for one day. If it works, change it for a week.

So, in Australia, you say “Hello, how are you?” Or “G’day how are you?” 65% of people will say, “not bad…” or “not too bad.”

M: Laugh.

V: And of course, we never say ‘Oh my God, what’s wrong?’

M: Mmm hmm.

V: We just ignore it, you know, it’s a wasted question. Wasted answer. So, we’ve done this in prisons. We’ve done this in all sorts of organisations. Today, I’d like you to say, “G’day, what’s been the best thing in your day?” or if it’s Friday, “What’s been the best thing in your week?” or Monday, “What was the best thing on your weekend?”

Now your language will get it right. That’s my language, but it works. The other day I was in the supermarket. I have a beautiful orange mask Marie, that says, “what makes you optimistic?” And the lady behind the checkout counter said, what do you do? And I said I run the Centre for Optimism. And I said, why don’t you try this for the day?

M: Mmm hmm.

V: Well, she looked a bit doubtful, and I said, well, let’s try it with the people behind us. So, there was a mother and a daughter about 10 or so and I said, Look, we’re just experimenting, tell us what’s the best thing in your day so far? And the girl said, I got 82 for my test and the mother lit up and the other two queues lit up and the other check out people lit up. And then the teller I said, well, what was the test?

M: Mmm hmm.

V: And in fact, I actually heard the business coach of the All Blacks in a radio interview say, “Well, I’ve been plagiarising Victor Perton for the last year.”

M: Laugh.

V: And that’s exactly what he’d been plagiarising that every one of his customers knows that when he comes in, he doesn’t want to hear a tale of woe to start with. He wants to hear a story of hope and optimism and opportunity, and Disney has got some great research on this Marie, Disney, Coke, Nike. All of the customer research they’re doing shows that people are yearning for stories of hope and optimism.

So, when we come back to who’s the leader and who’s got to change? As Gandhi said, the only person I can change is myself. So, for each and every one of your listeners, just for the rest of today or tomorrow, get rid of ‘how are you?’ and try ‘what’s the best thing in your day?’ Now, the first time you ask it, people will stare at you.

M: Laugh!

V: Because it’s so out of sync, and it’s like an Australian trying to order at McDonald’s in Louisiana. You know, you look like them, but they don’t understand what you’re saying.

M: Laugh.

V: So, you might have to repeat it. You know, ‘what was the best thing in your day’ or modified a little, but 80% of the time people will then share a little story of hope and optimism with you. And it might be ‘I had a beautiful breakfast’, or ‘my daughter made me a cup of tea’ or ‘God isn’t the sunshine beautiful.’ And the interesting thing Marie, coming back to that toxic positivity stuff is, in fact, if something’s wrong, if they say f-ing nothing, then you know there’s a question you need to ask them to help them with their well-being and for you to do the right thing.

M: Yeah.

I will if you’ll permit me, ask you one last question. Which is what has made you optimistic this week? Since it is a Friday.

V: So, this week. Yesterday I was at the University of Melbourne working with the staff of one of the Colleges.

M: Mmm hmm.

V: And going around the circle and asking each and every one of them, ‘what makes you optimistic?’ As you can imagine, there was one beautiful psychologist there who said, “Oh, this is a very difficult question.”

M: Laugh.

V: And we went through this, and it was just beautiful. And then the night before that, the Saint Ives Rotary meeting. And you know, there was one 85-year-old guy and he just lit up and he said, “Oh, Victor. You’ve made me more optimistic with the scientific evidence you’ve given me on the value of optimism. I’m 85, I now know I’ve got another at least seven years of optimistic living.

M: Laugh.

V: So, for me, it’s asking that question. What makes you optimistic? And I ask at least one person every day, whether it’s a President or a Prime Minister or women digging ditches in India.

M: Yeah.

V: And so, if your listeners want to do something that they will find quite interesting is, you know when you’re lying on the pillow tonight next to your partner or you’re at the dinner table, ask them what makes them optimistic, and they may stare at you at first, so you might have to define it for them.

M: Mmm hmm.

V: So, optimism is a belief that good things will happen and that things will work out in the end. And, of course, if your relative is a John Lennon fan, you can say John Lennon said,

“If it hasn’t worked out, it’s not the end.” [- John Lennon]

M: Mmm hmm.

V: But optimism is not, everything is rosy, everything is fantastic. Optimism is belief that things will work out in the end. And Marie, for those of you, are for your listeners who are students of history. There’s this wonderful Woman who lived through the black plague called Mother Julian of Norwich and she was an English mystic. And her book is said to be the oldest surviving book in English by a woman, called the Revelations. But in it is a famous phrase, ‘All shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well.’

V: And that has spawned poetry and music. So, if there’s one thing people remember from this rich conversation, Marie is:

All shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well.

M: I think that’s the perfect end to this fabulous conversation. Thank you so much for your time, Victor. 

V: Thanks, Marie.

[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! 

What are the best ways to improve your wellbeing and happiness?

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What is the best way to build personal wellbeing and happiness?

Let’s not bury the lead here: the latest research shows that it is possible to build your own wellbeing… but there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. 

Researchers at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) and Flinders University have conducted the largest ever meta-analysis of wellbeing studies from around the world to answer the question, ‘What’s the best way to build personal wellbeing?’.  

Their analysis included 400+ clinical trials involving more than 50,000 participants. Researchers divided people into three main groups, those in generally good health, those with physical illness and those with mental illness. 

“During stressful and uncertain periods in our lives, pro-actively working on our mental health is crucial to help mitigate the risk of mental and physical illness,” said Joep Van Agteren, co-lead at the SAHMRI Wellbeing and Resilience Centre. “Our research suggests there are numerous psychological approaches people should experiment with to determine what works for them.” 

However, all the interventions share a common need for consistent and prolonged practice for them to be effective in improving wellbeing. “Just trying something once or twice isn’t enough to have a measurable impact,” said co-author Matthew Iasiello from SAHMRI. “Regardless of what method people are trying out, they need to stick at it for weeks and months at a time for it to have a real effect.”  

6 Ways to improve your wellbeing 

So, what did the research show can make an impact on wellbeing? 

The study shows that in addition to seeking out professional help when distressed, there are many practical steps people can take to improve their wellbeing and prevent mental health problems. 

“Implementing such interventions can be done safely for individuals on their own or in a group format, either in person or online,” said Professor Michael Kyrios from the Órama Institute for Mental Health and Wellbeing at Flinders University. “It is therefore potentially a cost-effective addition to current referral pathways and treatment methods.” 

Here are the six proven ways to improve wellbeing: 

  1. Mindfulness: Practicing mindfulness, using techniques such as meditation and conscious breathing, was found to be effective at increasing wellbeing for all participants 
  1. Meaning: Working on your sense of purpose* 
  1. Kindness: Performing small acts of kindness* 
  1. Gratitude: Keeping a gratitude journal*  
  1. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT): this was proven to be beneficial for many people with mental illness 
  1. Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT): this was most useful for those in generally good health 

*Important note: these were all shown to be effective in combination, but not individually. 

Researchers believe these results highlight the need for a change of tactics in how society cares for people’s wellbeing, whether they’re living with a mental illness or not. 

“We need to take everyone’s wellbeing seriously and ensure we’re taking the necessary steps to improve mental and physical health so we can prevent future complications for ourselves and keep healthcare costs down,” Prof Kyrios said. 

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!  

Ways to improve your wellbeing and happiness (E101)

by

Happiness for Cynics podcast

Join Marie and Pete this week as they discuss a recent study that shows the best ways to improve your wellbeing and happiness.

Show notes

During the podcast, Marie and Pete discuss a few cartoons but are unsure of some of the details. Here is some information on those topics.

Mighty Mouse (1942)

Mighty Mouse is an American animated anthropomorphic superhero mouse who was originally called Super Mouse, and made his debut in the 1942 short The Mouse of Tomorrow. The name was changed to Mighty Mouse in his eighth film, 1944’s The Wreck of the Hesperus. He also appeared in the British nursery comic Bimbo circa 1968, in what appear to be brand new stories created for the pre-school readers of that title.

Roger Ramjet (1965)

Roger Ramjet was an animated children’s comedy series created in the United States and first running in 1965, but frequently in syndication since. Starring Roger Ramjet and the American Eagle Squadron, the show was known for its crude animation as well as its references to popular culture.

Wacky Races (1968)

This cartoon was referenced but not named during the podcast with mentions of Penelope Pitstop and Dick (not Dan) Dastardly and his dog Muttley.

Wacky Races is an American animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions for Saturday mornings. The series features 11 different cars racing against each other in various road rallies throughout North America, with all of the drivers hoping to win the title of the “World’s Wackiest Racer”.
Racers:

  1. Dick Dastardly and Muttley in the Mean Machine
  2. Penelope Pitstop in the Compact Pussycat
  3. The Slag Brothers in the Boulder Mobile
  4. Lazy Luke and Blubber Bear in the Arkansas Chuggabug
  5. Professor Pat Pending in the Convert-a-Car
  6. The Gruesome Twosome in the Creepy Coupe
  7. Sergeant Blast and Private Meekly in the Army Surplus Special
  8. The Ant Hill Mob in the Bulletproof Bomb
  9. Rufus Ruffcut and Sawtooth in the Buzzwagon
  10. The Red Max in the Crimson Haybaler
  11. Peter Perfect in the Turbo Terrific

Transcript

Coming soon

Go on, why not build your own wellbeing hub?

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Let’s stop and think for a minute. What do you want?  

What do you want and hope for – for yourself, for your family and your community? What do you want for the future of our country? What does a good life mean to you?  

Maybe you want security in retirement and a bit of money left over to travel. Maybe you want to spend more time with your kids. Or maybe you want less stress and more time to relax.  

Many studies have asked parents what they want most for their kids – the overwhelming answer is always “happiness.” Not money, or a nice car, or big house. Just happiness. Yet, for as long as modern Western governments have existed, amassing wealth has been the primary measure that most countries have used to determine success and social progress. If Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increased year on year, our leaders have jovially patted themselves on the backs for a job well done. And while that worked for a while, with wellbeing increasing in line with GDP for most of the 20th century, at a certain point in a country’s economic development, the focus on GDP stops yielding as many benefits for its people.  

The recently released annual Herald/Age-Lateral Economics Wellbeing Index, shows Australians have suffered negative impacts to their wellbeing during the coronavirus crisis. These impacts are largely overlooked by traditional economic indicators, however the Herald/Age index looks at more than just GDP. It includes changes in education, health, work life, social inequality and environmental degradation. And the results for overall Australian wellbeing are not good, showing a decline in Australian’s wellbeing during the pandemic worth an estimated $13.3 billion. 

That’s $13.3 BILLION! It’s clear that the measure of GDP alone does not tell the full story of Australian wealth, for what is wealth if we don’t have the health to enjoy it? 

Sadly, these declines in health and wellbeing are not new. Our society needs a new way to achieve (and measure) wellbeing and social progress. To combat rising obesity and mental health issues, we need to prioritise wellbeing and provide easier access to wellbeing activities and initiatives for all Australian citizens. Quite simply, every Australian neighbourhood needs a wellbeing hub, so we can all achieve happier, healthier lives.  

What do we mean by “wellbeing”? 

Why you need a wellbeing hub in your community

Wellbeing is a multi-faceted concept which encompasses our mental, emotional and physical wellbeing. It includes: 

  • Meaning and purpose – having meaning and purpose in your life, which is often tied to a strong sense of identity and self. This is about having autonomy and agency to do the things you love and also having something to get you out of bed in the morning, and about having goals, plans and commitments. 
  • Community and connection – having strong relationships, building community and connection. Do you have a core group of people you can talk to and depend on? Are you building a wider community network, through activities like church or regular volunteering? 
  • Physical health – are you getting outside, exercising, eating well, sleeping well? 
  • Mental health – do you prioritise your mental health? Do you practice kindness and gratitude? Do you manage negative thoughts, and do you actively work on your resilience, stress and positive mental health? Do you have control over your emotions or seek help when needed? 

If you’re thinking you already don’t have enough time in your day/week/month, don’t fret. Thankfully there are many activities that bring all or some of the above elements together in one. 

Wellbeing is also about balance. It’s about investing in the above activities and outcomes so they can balance out the challenges. The more coins we put into our piggy bank when times are good, the better we weather challenges when times are bad. 

Charting a way forward: wellbeing hubs 

Early in the positive psychology movement, researchers discovered that happier and healthier people perform better at school, work and… well… life more broadly. In response to this research, many schools launched Wellbeing Hubs to teach and support students’ wellbeing.  

In Australia, for instance, the Australian Student Wellbeing Framework supports Australian schools to promote positive relationships and the wellbeing of students and educators within safe, inclusive and connected learning communities. The Framework was endorsed by Australia’s Ministers of Education and is based on evidence that demonstrates the strong association between safety, wellbeing and learning. To help achieve this goal, the Australian Government Department of Education, Skills and Employment provides school and teacher wellbeing resources, such as podcasts, lesson plans and information via their the Student Wellbeing Hub website.  

The site says: 

“Wellbeing is a multi-faceted concept involving much more than just physical health. It’s a combination of a person’s emotional, mental and social health and it also reflects how they feel about themselves and their life in general. Wellbeing is linked to improved academic achievement, enhanced mental health and responsible life choices. Helping students to feel connected and engaged in their learning, and collaborating effectively with parents, will enable students to develop the social and emotional skills to grow into happy, respectful, well-balanced and successful members of their school and wider community.” 

While schools are leading the way, unfortunately the rest of society has been slower to get on board. So what’s the answer for everyone else? Community wellbeing hubs. 

In 2013, father of positive psychology Dr. Martin Seligman spend a year in South Australia as the Thinker in Residence. During his time there, he challenged South Australia to position itself as a world-leading State of wellbeing. In response, the SA Government launched the ‘State of Wellbeing’ Change@SA 90 Day Project and resulting program of work, which aims to “provide all South Australians with the supports and resources they need to manage challenges, grasp opportunities, achieve their personal and collective goals, and flourish.” 

At the time, then Premier Jay Weatherill said the SA Government recognised the strong link between the wellbeing of its citizens and communities and the economic prosperity of the state. “Wellbeing is more than psychological health. Our government, non-government sectors and community are playing crucial roles in supporting a vast range of programs, policies, resources and facilities that contribute to personal, community and societal wellbeing,” he said. 

Not long after, Wellbeing SA partnered with the City of Playford and Naracoorte Lucindale Council to co-invest in local Wellbeing Hubs. These hubs deliver a range of wellbeing initiatives to support community physical, mental and social wellbeing. In Canberra, a Wellbeing Hub was recently launched by to Minister Stephen-Smith who helped plant seedlings for their Growing healthy kids program. The Wellbeing Hub – which has physical and virtual programs – supports locals to enjoy physical and mental health, have strong social connections, participate in their communities and feel safe. 

Around the world, wellbeing hubs are popping up to combat the challenges of the 21st century – bringing people together to build community, providing opportunities to find meaning, learn and grow, and encouraging active healthy lifestyles. With a $13.3 billion impact to our wellbeing due to Covid (and it’s impacts to our activity levels, loneliness and mental health), it’s time for these wellbeing hubs to be set up across the country. 

How will you get involved in making it happen? 

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! 

‘Toxic positivity’: Why it is important to live with negative emotions

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Andrée-Ann Labranche, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)

It is almost impossible to go on Facebook or Instagram without seeing quotes or comments accompanied with motivational words such as, “Look on the bright side,” “Focus on the good things,” or “Be positive.”

If anything, the pandemic has exacerbated the phenomenon of “toxic positivity.” In Québec, the famous catchphrase, “It’s going to be OK,” is undoubtedly one of the best known examples of this.

Though well-intentioned, these phrases can end up creating more distress instead of helping. Why? Because they are examples of toxic positivity, a school of thought that operates on the principle that one should always have a positive attitude, even when things get difficult.

As a doctoral student in psychology, I am interested in internalized symptoms (depression, anxiety and social withdrawal) and externalized symptoms (delinquency, violent, oppositional/defensive, disruptive and impulsive behaviours). I believe it is important to focus on the negative consequences of “emotional invalidation” and to understand why we need to live with our negative emotions.

Emotional invalidation

When a person talks about what they are feeling, their main goal is usually to validate their emotions, to understand and accept the emotional experience. In contrast, emotional invalidation involves ignoring, denying, criticizing or rejecting another person’s feelings.

Several studies have looked at the effects of emotional invalidation. The conclusions are clear: it is very harmful to mental health. People who experience emotional invalidation are more likely to have depressive symptoms.

Emotional invalidation has many negative effects. A person who is regularly invalidated may have difficulty accepting, controlling and understanding their emotions.

What’s more, people who expect their emotions to be invalidated are less likely to exhibit psychological flexibility, which is the ability to tolerate difficult thoughts and emotions and to resist unnecessarily defending oneself.

The more psychological flexibility a person has, the more they are able to live with their emotions and to get through difficult situations. For example, in the aftermath of a breakup, a young man feels anger, sadness and confusion. His friend listens to him and validates him. The man then normalizes his conflicting feelings and understands that the feelings will not last forever.

In contrast, another man going through the same type of breakup doesn’t understand his feelings, feels ashamed and fears losing control of his emotions. His friend invalidates him and won’t listen to him. The man then tries to suppress his emotions, which creates anxiety and can even lead to depression.

These two examples, drawn from the study “Processes underlying depression: Risk aversion, emotional schemas, and psychological flexibility” by American psychologists and researchers Robert L. Leahy, Dennis Tirch and Poonam S. Melwani, are neither rare nor harmless. The avoidance reaction, which involved doing everything possible to avoid experiencing negative emotions, is often amplified by the people around us.

Some people are so affected by other people’s unhappiness that just seeing this sadness makes them unhappy. This is why they react by making positive comments. However, the ability to live with our emotions is essential. Suppressing or avoiding them does not solve anything. In fact, trying to avoid negative emotions at all costs does not bring about the desired effect — on the contrary, the emotions tend to return more often, and more intensely.

Being negative: A state of mind with ancient origins

Unfortunately, humans are not designed to be positive all the time. On the contrary, we are more likely to recall bad memories. This probably goes back to a time, ages ago, when our survival depended on our reflex to avoid danger. A person who ignored signs of danger, even once, could end up in a catastrophic or even deadly situation.

In this article, “Bad is stronger than good,” the authors, both psychologists, explain how in evolutionary history the organisms that were better at identifying danger were more likely to survive threats. So the most alert among human beings had a higher probability of passing on their genes. The result is that we are in some ways programmed to pay attention to potential sources of danger.

How the negativity bias manifests itself

This phenomenon is known as the negativity bias. Research has identified four manifestations of this bias that allow us to better understand it. One of these manifestations is linked to the vocabulary we use to describe negative events.

In a phenomenon called negative differentiation, it turns out that the vocabulary we have to describe negative events is much richer and more varied than the vocabulary used to describe positive events. In addition, negative stimuli are generally interpreted as more elaborate and differentiated than are positive ones.

The vocabulary used to describe physical pain is also much more complex than that used to describe physical pleasure. Another example: parents find it easier to judge their babies’ negative emotions than their positive emotions.

No more prefabricated sentences

Negative emotions are a product of human complexity and are as important as positive ones.

The next time someone confides in you about their emotions, if you don’t know what to say, opt for listening and emotional validation. Use expressions like, “It looks like you had a hard day,” or, “It was hard, wasn’t it?”

It’s worth noting that being positive is not always synonymous with toxic positivity — the goal of which is to reject and avoid everything negative and only see the positive side of things. An example of positive and validating language is, “It is normal to feel the way you do after such a serious event, let’s try to make sense of it.” Toxic positivity, on the other hand, sounds more like, “Stop seeing the negative side, think about the positive things instead.”

Finally, if you are unable to validate and listen, refer the person to a mental health professional who will know how to help them.

Andrée-Ann Labranche, Candidate au doctorat en psychologie, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)

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 Cynics and weekly email newsletter for regular updates and news!  

The Importance of Living with Negative Emotions (E99)

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Happiness for Cynics podcast

This week, Join Marie and Pete as they discuss toxic positivity and the importance of living with negative emotions.

Show notes

Men’s Shed

The modern Men’s Shed is an updated version of the shed in the backyard that has long been a part of Australian culture. Men’s Sheds are found in many cities and towns around Australia and continue to spring up internationally.

Most men have learned from our culture that they don’t talk about feelings and emotions many do not take an interest in their own health and well-being. Becoming a member of a Men’s Shed provides a safe and busy environment where men can find many of these things in an atmosphere of old-fashioned mateship. And, importantly, there is no pressure. Men can just come and have a yarn and a cuppa if that is all they’re looking for.

Dadirri – Deep listening  

The Aboriginal people of Australia have long practiced deep listening or dadirri, an almost spiritual skill, based on respect. Deep listening is inner, quiet, still awareness and waiting.  

“Australia needs to know that Dadirri can help you slow down, stop, and help you realise who you are, what you’re about, where you’re going, where you belong.” – Miriam Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann 

Transcription

[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] 

P: Welcome back.

M: So?

P: Bright and bushy tailed.

M: So, what are we talking about today, Pete?

P: So, today is about living with negative emotions. Toxic positivity.

M: Not toxic positivity.

P: We’re talking about toxic positivity, but not enjoying toxic positivity. So, it’s the reverse.

M: We are being cynical of toxic positivity.

P: [Gasp] Cynics, yay! The cynic is back.

M: It’s even in the name.

P: Mmm.

M: Toxic.

P: Yes. Oddly enough, this came up in my lecture this week with my tutor.

M: Oh, nice.

P: Yes, and I felt very, very, very empowered by saying, you know the definition of toxic positivity is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

M & P: Laugh.

P: I thought I’d gotten the record when I pulled out the word thoraco-abdominal fascia.

M: Wrong podcast.

P: Laugh.

M: But what is toxic positivity then, Pete?

P: According to Andrée-Ann Labranche, who is a candidate of psychological doctorate at the University of Quebec in Montreal,

“Toxic positivity [words] are dismissive comments focused on happiness, and “all is well” that denies emotional validation.”

M: And I think this is really important because we speak so much about happiness, joy, subjective wellbeing, whatever you want to call it, and the power of that to really transform lives.

P: Mmm, oh yes. Empowering and getting in touch with it and doing all the work to encourage it and be aware of it.

M: And personally, it has changed me. It’s the flourish and thrive argument. We’ve spoken about that as well.

P: Mmm.

M: The difference between just having life happen to you and taking life by the balls –

P: Laugh!

M: – and running with it and loving life.

P: Yeah.

M: And with that kind of rhetoric, people looking in from the outside can often think, ‘Well, my life’s going… I’m going through divorce, retirement, redundancy, big life changes and things aren’t good.’

P: Mmm.

M: Grief.

P: Yes. ‘And I just can’t be happy right now.’

M: Yeah.

P: [Whispers] But that’s okay.

M: Well, we’re here to say that’s okay, but a lot of the slogans on the T-shirts and the really short, sharp, ‘nine ways to be happier’ articles that don’t go into the science or only present one-sided view of positivity can create this environment of toxic positivity.

P: Which is really negative for you and really creates trauma and depression and anxiety. And really debilitating emotions come about because of that.

M: Absolutely, and really something that a lot of men’s groups are finding –

P: Mmm, yes.

M: – over the last 10, 20 years, we’ve discussed this as well, is… Men’s Health, I know there’s a lot of articles now about mental health.

P: It’s so in the current mode of thought, because of the [high] rates of suicide for men.

M: Absolutely. So, I know that one in five people experience mental health issues in any one year. What we do know also is that when men attempt suicide when women attempt suicide, men are more successful.

P: Yeah.

M: So, what we’re saying here is that it is impossible to live in a world where everything is happy.

P: Those things are just annoying, aren’t they?

M: Laugh.

P: These really happy people, I’m just like, “Can I pinch you on the arm or something? Just give you something to deal with.” Laugh.

M: And things go wrong constantly. And it’s all well and good when things are going well and life is happy and you’ve got a lot to be grateful for.

P: Yep.

M: But that is not sustainable.

P: Mmm.

M: There is no way to avoid pain and trauma and grief and at the same time experience happiness. You could go crawl into a hole and do nothing, but you’ll experience no joy as well as no pain.

P: Mmm. This is what Labranche is talking about. She’s talking about owning your negative emotions and confronting them and giving them space.

M: Yes.

P: Actually going, it is permissible for you to feel low to feel down, and that’s really important because that emotional validation is so vital for us. If we don’t get these negative emotions, she says in the article, they keep coming back and they come back with more velocity and more intensity.

M: Absolutely. It’s like spending on a credit card, you keep making transactions and eventually you’ve got to pay the bill.

P: Yes, yes! Oh, I like that analogy.

M: Eventually, you know someone’s going to come knocking on your door and the time will come. You pay it, or you do the work, and you feel the pain and you do the processing, and you do the self-growth or it comes out in really unhealthy ways, like anger and violence.

P: Oh yes. Labranche talks about that being the externalised symptoms of delinquency, violence, defensiveness, disrupted miss and impulsive behaviours.

M: And a lot of that comes from perhaps being around a toxic positivity environment where people haven’t felt that they could be sad or angry or mad, or also where they don’t have the tools, the language.

P: Mmm.

M: Or society hasn’t allowed them, particular again with men, to feel that they can have a cry or that they can have a vent to a friend and a lot of the times they’re told to suck it up.

P: Yep.

M: We’ve really got that culture, that Aussie bloke culture here in Australia. But there are similar, similar pressures, societal pressures with a lot of Western men.

P: Mmm.

M: Now there are some other cultures around the world where men are encouraged to have tantrums and cry and throw plates and show their emotion and again there’s a difference between a negative emotions and negative behaviours.

P: Yes.

M: We’re not at all condoning violence, but to show that emotion and that is seen as a sign of strength.

P: Mmm, yeah

M: Our country is not like that.

P: I think it’s changing.

M: It is.

P: I do think the conversation is changing in Australia. We are an inheritor of the British stiff upper lip.

M: Mmm hmm.

P: I think that there’s a lot more conversations, a lot more awareness about it now, anyway. And there are things like the Men’s Shed, for example, which is encouraging that conversation and encouraging that safe space for emotional expression and for emotional intelligence to come forward.

M: Absolutely. Before the show, when we were doing our research, we were talking about what happens when people approach life with a toxic positivity mindset.

P: Mmm.

M: So, the reason you want positivity to balance out negativity is that we are wired and hardwired to look for the negative. If we finish a project, what do we do? We call them PIR’s, in the corporate world, you go and look at everything that went wrong so you can not do it again next time.

P: Laugh.

M: It’s continuous improvement.

P: Yeah.

M: You finish a sports game and the coach says, “All right, here’s what we didn’t get right this time. That’s what we’re going to work on in the gym next week.”

P: Mmm.

M: We mess something up and we berate ourselves and we think, ‘Why didn’t I do X, Y and Z,’ so that is natural evolutionary, biological hard wiring in us. The people who are better at looking out for the dangers around them lived, right?

P: We’re hard wired to see the negative.

M: And so also adding in the positive isn’t about over indexing on the positive and not seeing the negative. It’s about balancing out what we’re naturally doing with the negative.

P: Yeah, and giving space to both.

M: Yep.

P: That’s the, that’s the good part.

M: Balancing it, balancing it.

P: For sure.

M: And when it becomes toxic is when it becomes the only thing.

P: Mmm.

M: Just like only being negative, only being positive and not allowing yourself or others to have space to experience those negative feelings –

P: I did some work around this. Sorry, sorry about cutting you off there. I did some work around this with a therapist a few years back, and I found it very difficult to give voice to that negative… that, that sort of negative area. Sorry for the positive side of the negative.

M: Mmm hmm. The silver lining?

P: Yeah, it was It was really difficult. And I remember being in the corner of the room and actually physically I was like that little black spot, it needs a voice you need to give it a voice. And I was like, “I can’t allow it to come out.” So, it took a lot of work and a lot of imagery and physical-isation to actually even acknowledge that.

M: Yeah.

P: And I think that, that’s something that maybe a lot of people do struggle with is going, “No, there is something, there is something in the negative that you’re allowed to actually express.”

M: Yep.

P: And get it out there and talk to a friend to talk to a trusted one. Talk to a loved one about it.

M: Or find a psychologist.

P: Yes.

M: Or psychiatrist you can talk to.

P: Yeah.

M: All right. So, the reason that toxic positivity, you know, it’s at the wrong end of the spectrum there. You want to be in the middle with a good mix of positive and negative emotions and experiences. You want to be able to look at the negative emotions and find the positive out of them and look at the positive and in a way to better yourself in the situation.

P: Mmm.

M: Also, be able to pull back and have a look at things that didn’t go right or could have been done better so that we can learn.

P: To help you move forward.

M: Yep. And that’s, that’s not going to change. Let’s be honest.

P: Laugh.

M: But where toxic positivity can be really harmful is when someone comes to you and wants to express negativity, something that’s gone wrong, whether it’s grief or shame, or any raft of negative emotions, and we emotionally invalidate what they’re saying.

P: Yeah, yeah. That’s the, “Oh, can’t you just be happy?”

M: Yes.

P: “Can’t you look at the positive? Can’t you see what you’ve got that’s brilliant?

M: Mmm hmm. “That’s really sad, but I’m sure it won’t be that bad.”

P: Yeah, that’s what we don’t want to do.

M: “What do you want for dinner?”

P: Laugh. “Let’s have a cup of tea.”

M & P: Laugh.

M: Yep.

P: That’s definitely what we don’t want to happen. So, if you’re dealing with someone who has that need or desire to express some negativity, the first thing you need to do is to acknowledge it.

M: Validate their emotions. You don’t also have to understand their emotions. So, if it’s real for them, it’s real.

P: Exactly.

M: And so, we teach a lot of this in my company. Actually, if someone is going through a tough time, even if it wouldn’t even rate on your scale of tough to not tough, even if it’s not even on there. If they’re not coping, if they’re having a hard time, then they’re going through something that requires validation.

P: Yes.

M: And requires, you know, the person on the other end to stop and listen.

P: Yeah.

M: So, there’s some great examples from a study by American psychologists, and they looked at two examples. So, one in the aftermath of a breakup. A young man feels anger, sadness and confusion. His friend listens to him and validates him. The man then normalises his conflicting feelings and understands the feelings will not last forever.

P: Hmm.

M: So, amongst that he would also not feel alone as well, which is really important.

P: Mmm.

M: In contrast, we look at another man who is going through the same type of breakup and doesn’t understand his feelings, feels ashamed and fears losing control of his emotions. His friends invalidate him and won’t listen to him. The man then tries to suppress his emotions, which creates anxiety and can even lead to depression.

P: Yeah, definitely.

M: And as hard as it is to rock up to your mates at the pub after a few beers and ball your eyes out and be like, “I just don’t know why she left me. She was the love of my life, and I feel bad, or I messed up or it was all her fault.”

P: Laugh.

M: Whatever it is, being able to have some friends listen and go, “that sucks, mate. Yeah, I’m on your side. She was horrid, I never liked her in the first place.”

P: Laugh.

M: “Let me buy you another drink.”

P & M: Laugh.

P: Having friends who will do that for you and let you vent and process.

P: Yeah.

M: Process as well, is so important to healing.

P: Yeah.

M: The other thing we want to talk about was avoidance reaction.

P: Well, that’s the whole thing of doing everything possible to avoid negative emotions. Like the minute you feel something you go “La la la la, I’m going to go with the here and jump up and down and pretend to be a unicorn, and everything will be fine!”

M: [High pitched, shrill voice] Fine! It’s the word fine, isn’t it? I’m fine!

P: Laugh, yes. We know what that stands for? Did we maybe want to look that up because I don’t know if we’re allowed to say that on air, laugh… F’d up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional.

M: Mmm hmm. Fine. Okay, fine. Just fine.

P: Laugh! And this is this is this is where those negative emotions, if we don’t address them and don’t give them the space they do return more often and with greater intensity. And the Labranche talks about that in the article that we read for this week, it really is important to give those negative emotions space. It’s like the universe just keeps going, “Oh, you didn’t learn the lesson? Here it is again.”

M: Laugh.

P: “And here it is again.” “And here it is AGAIN!” Laugh.

M: So, I’ve been reading this book called Reasons to Stay Alive, and it is that macabre I will say.

P: Mmm.

M: It is also based on the science behind the idea of talking about suicide, depression and anxiety and how if done right and sensitively, it can actually help people to not commit suicide. So, opening up these conversations there’s another great Netflix series called 13 Reasons Why.

P: Ahh.

M: Where the main protagonist kills herself and leaves behind a range of tapes for the people in her life to listen to.

P: Wow.

M: Yep, and when done sensitively and with the appropriate disclaimers and next steps of people who may be struggling, it’s really important to broach these conversations in appropriate ways. So, the books by Matt Haig, his a famous author, and he’s written a bunch of other stuff. But he has struggled through his life since his twenties with anxiety and depression, and I just love this quote of his. So, he says, “You need to feel life’s terror to feel it’s wonder.”

P: Oh. Mmm. It’s like experiencing both sides of the seesaw.

M: Absolutely. So, he talks about depression and anxiety through his book and what that means to him acknowledging fully that that means something completely different to other people, everyone experiences that differently. But he also talks about how you don’t appreciate the sun rise until you’ve thought about ending it all.

P: Mmm.

M: You don’t appreciate toast and coffee on the porch with your wife until you’ve been so low that you thought you couldn’t go on. So, there is something about that negative emotion that can have a silver lining.

P: Yep.

M: It can, once you get through it, make the life on the other side that much more meaningful and precious. And again, definitely with me since the accident.

P: Mmm.

M: Just feel that there’s so much in this world, in this life, to explore and that brings joy and satisfaction and laughs and happiness and all of that, that we’ll never get through it all in a lifetime.

P: Yeah.

M: And so, every second spent pursuing it is a blessing.

P: I’m with you there.

M: Yeah. Alright, we’re starting to run out of time, so we might just skip into negativity bias.

P: Yes, it’s the vocabulary for negative experiences, so many words that we have for… We have more words in our vocabulary… It’s so much easier to describe negative experiences than it is to describe positive experiences, so it’s easier to go negative. It’s easy to look for something that confirms your negative belief.

M: Mmm hmm.

P: Sometimes they said, this is about reframing it’s about “Okay, well, maybe I need to do that for my positive experiences as well”, learning to recognise the positive experience, but then dive a little bit deeper into it and go, “Okay, well, was I happy or was I elated? Was I euphoric?” It’s giving that little bit more of a descriptive label, if you like, so that you actually spend some time dwelling on how –

M: Good?

P: – bloody fabulous it was! Laugh.

M: And again, negative bias is another scientific word which just pretty much says what we spoke about earlier this episode. We are geared to notice the negative and dwell on the negative.

P: Mmm, yep.

M: So, we have a bias towards negative. If you’re not proactively looking for that silver lining or being grateful, practising gratitude is a great way to be re-wiring the brain for the positive. Such a simple exercise to add the balance back in, then your natural evolutionary self, the… is it the limbic? Which part of your brain?

P: That’s the emotional brain, yep.

M: The ah… fight or flight old school. Amygdala. [pronounced uh-mig-dar-la]

P: Laugh! Amygdala. [pronounced uh-mig-duh-luh] Laugh!

M: We will forever disagree on this.

P: Laugh.

M: But if you’re not taking control of those centres of the brain or balancing them out and letting them run rampant through your head. Then you will most likely be in that negative area forever.

P: Yeah, yeah so true. So, filter your negativity bias, get some positivity bias in there every now and then as well.

M: Yep. All right, so we had to tips to finish up. So, tip number one. When people come to you and they’re going through bad times, it might feel like you’re helping them to help them see the positive. But really, what you need to do is take a breath, validate what they’re saying. Yes, I hear you. Yes, I understand that sounds tough, sad, etcetera. And also listen.

P: Mmm.

M: Rather than jumping straight into solving motion, which is where my head goes, just sit and listen and let them know it’s all right and you’re there.

P: There’s a thing you can reference called deep listening, and it actually dates back to traditional aboriginal culture. But yeah, that ability to listen in Western society particularly, we don’t listen well. We are not good with silence. Asian cultures are better at it.

M: It just feels so awkward, doesn’t it?

P: That’s the thing. It is awkward for us. So, it’s a little tip.

M: And then the next thing is for you. You and me, is to learn to recognise negative feelings and talk about them, obviously in an appropriate way. I see a lot of people who are struggling with this part of their lives who post rants on Facebook, and that’s a place that’s going to make you more lonely.

P: Yep.

M: People don’t respond or know what to do with a lot of those posts.

P: Yeah.

M: But reach out to someone. Reach out to someone and go have a coffee with them and let them know what’s going on your life and again just ask them just to listen, right.

P: Mmm.

M: There will be time for solving stuff later or working out a plan forward later. But to begin with, you need someone who can listen or pay a professional. And then eventually, though, you do want to stop just talking over and over and over and over about the negative thing and start taking steps to –

P: – Action something.

M: Yeah, to bring some of that positivity back in and to start balancing that out, but only when you’re ready.

P: Yeah, mmm.

M: Alright and on that note,

P: have a happy week.

M: And stay cynical.

P: Laugh!

[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!  

Top Positive Psychology Research in 2021

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The Positive Psychology world suffered two great losses this year, first with Edward Diener who passed away in April and then Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in October. Diener, otherwise known as Dr. Happiness, was recognized as a leader in measuring what he called “subjective well-being.” Csikszentmihalyi was a pioneer in the Positive Psychology space and introduced the concept of flow theory in the 1970’s. These losses were great but the legacies that these two larger than life figures left behind will live on in the Positive Psychology world for years to come. 

In what was a tough year all around, there was still plenty of hope and great research into how to live a happy life, which not only helped many of us to cope with an unprecedented global crisis, but also learn more about ourselves and what’s truly important in life.  

What we Have Learnt from the Pandemic 

COVID-19’s Impact on Mental Health Hasn’t Been All Bad (Psychology Today). The COVID-19 pandemic has caused mental distress, but it has also strengthened people’s mental health in many ways. New research shows how the crisis has increased mental health through three main processes. 

A Once-in-a-Lifetime Chance to Start Over (The Atlantic). It’s time to prepare for a new and better normal than your pre-pandemic life. 

Stumbling into the Next Stage of Your Pandemic Life (Greater Good Magazine). A therapist explores the psychology of coming back from the big pandemic pause. 

How to Make Your Post-Pandemic Happiness Last (GQ). Human happiness is surprisingly resistant to change—even to positive shifts. So as the pandemic wanes in the U.S., is it possible to make these good feelings stay? 

The 9 Silver Linings of the COVID-19 Pandemic (Psychology Today). Researchers found that the average sentiment of participants’ responses was positive when describing the pandemic’s silver linings. The results of the study may help people better heal from this crisis and be better prepared to respond to potential future crises. 

Research Suggests Positive Forward-Thinking Safeguards Mental Health During Lockdowns (Mental Health Today). We all might feel nostalgic for a time when we weren’t confined to our homes or had rules imposed upon us in public spaces; however new research from the University of Surrey suggests that if we forget about 2020 or even our current lockdown state in 2021 and look forward to the future, our mental wellbeing will presently be more resilient. 

Plan to Find Happiness 

Frequent travel could make you 7% happier (Science Daily). People dreaming of travel post-COVID-19 now have some scientific data to support their wanderlust. A new study shows frequent travellers are happier with their lives than people who don’t travel at all. 

How Trip Planning and Happiness Are Directly Correlated (Psychology Today). Research reveals that planning future travel may boost mood and mindset. 

What Is Transformational Travel? Holidaying With A Purpose Is The New Switching Off (Bazaar). Explore how the power of trips taken with consciousness can emanate positivity, personal growth, and mental wellness for all. 

Be Curious and Learn 

Learning Boosts Happiness, New Study Suggests (Sci News). New research from University College London suggests that how we learn about the world around us can be more important for how we feel than rewards we receive directly. 

Curiosity and Happiness Go Hand in Hand (The Philadelphia Inquirer). As Einstein said: The important thing is to never stop questioning. Research suggests that consistent curiosity goes hand in hand with happiness.  

Happiness can be Learned Through Meditation, Philosophy and Training (Medical Xpress). Is it possible to learn to be happier? Well, it seems it is—at least according to a scientific study coordinated by the University of Trento and carried out in collaboration with Sapienza University of Rome, now published in Frontiers in Psychology. 

The Wonder Stuff: What I Learned About Happiness from a Month of ‘Awe Walks’ (The Guardian). Feeling down? You need to experience more awe, psychologists say. So, I set off every day to explore my local area, leaving my phone behind. 

Green is Good 

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. 

Embrace your Inner DJ 

20 Surprising, Science-Backed Health Benefits of Music (USA Today). Research suggests that music not only helps us cope with pain — it can also benefit our physical and mental health in numerous other ways. Read on to learn how listening to tunes can ramp up your health. 

The Unsung Secret to Stability and Happiness During The Pandemic (ZDNet). It’s been a hard year, but at least many people have found a reliable way to reduce stress and increase happiness. Netflix is great and exercise is important, but music, it turns out, has made a positive difference in the lives of many during an often-bleak and perpetually uncertain pandemic year. 

Coping With COVID-19 Stress Through Music (Neuroscience News). Study reports people who experienced an increase in negative emotion during lockdown listened to music to relieve feelings of depression, stress, and fear. Those with a more positive state of mind turned to music as a replacement for social interaction. 

Work for Meaning, Purpose and Happiness  

The ‘Great Realization’ has Inspired People to Seek Happiness in Their Jobs and Careers (Forbes). A study of work happiness commissioned by Indeed, the large job aggregation site, and conducted by Forrester, delved into how we feel about our jobs and careers. 

Why Work Is More Than Just a Job (Psychology Today). We have been conditioned to think of work primarily as a source of income. The truth is, our job can have a powerful effect on our psychological well-being. Acknowledging the benefits of work can help us better shape our careers. 

The Great Resignation is Here: How to Find Purpose in The Next Stage of Your Career (Forbes). By now, you’ve likely heard about the Great Resignation. Due to the pandemic, changes in work-life balance, childcare and other factors, an estimated 40% of the global workforce is considering changing jobs in 2021. Anecdotal evidence and data suggest that it has much to do with our values and feeling aligned with our purpose. 

How Self-Determination Can Boost Satisfaction at Work (Psychology Today). Self-Determination Theory provides a framework for understanding changes in work motivation. Motivation often decreases when core psychological needs have not been met. Work structures that support autonomy, competence, and relatedness can facilitate motivation and productivity. 

Get the Best Sleep 

The Organizational Cost of Insufficient Sleep (McKinsey). In an increasingly hyperconnected world, in which many companies now expect their employees to be on call and to answer emails 24/7, sleep is an important organizational topic that requires specific and urgent attention. 

Mindfulness Training Helps Kids Sleep Better (Stanford Medicine). At-risk children gained more than an hour of sleep per night after participating in a mindfulness curriculum at their elementary schools, a study from the Stanford University School of Medicine found.  

Natural Light May be Key to Improving Mood and Reducing Insomnia (Neuroscience News). More time spent outside in natural light was associated with improved mood, better sleep quality, and ease of waking. 

Laugh! 

How Laughing at Yourself Can Be Good for Your Well-Being (Psychology Today). Laughing at oneself is healthy when it is not motivated by self-demeaning drives. People who engage in excessive self-defeating humour may be trying to hide underlying emotional problems. Self-directed laughter can remind us of our humanness and promote positive interpersonal interactions. 

Laugh more, live better (McKinsey & Company). Naomi Bagdonas and Connor Diemand-Yauman, lecturers at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, hilariously explore the power at the intersection of humour, business, and leadership. It’s no joke. 

Seriously Funny: Humour is a Character Strength (Neuroscience News). Researchers say the use and appreciation of humour is positive for overall wellbeing and psychological health. Humour is observed in all cultures and at all ages. But only in recent decades has experimental psychology respected it as an essential, fundamental human behaviour. 

A Little Laughter Decreases Stress and Improves Productivity (Forbes). Paul Osincup is a positivity strategist and his mission is to create workplace happiness. He does this with his humorous and inspirational style of teaching and speaking. According to Osincup, “Humour is the new mindfulness.” You can actually train your brain to see and experience humour more often. 

Viewing Memes Online Increases Positive Emotions, Helps Cope with Pandemic (Penn State). Viewing memes online may increase positive emotions which can help improve one’s confidence in the ability to cope with life during a pandemic. The recently published study also showed that people who viewed memes with COVID-19-related captions reported lower levels of COVID-related stress than did those who saw a non-COVID caption. 

Share the Love! 

There’s a Specific Kind of Joy We’ve Been Missing (The New York Times). Research has found that people laugh five times as often when they’re with others as when they’re alone. Peak happiness lies mostly in collective activity. 

Hard Times Make for Stronger Bonds and Greater Happiness: Here’s Why That Matters (Forbes). You’ve heard it before: Going through hard times is one of the things that can create bonds between people. In fact, the more difficult the experience, the more bonding that may occur. And a global pandemic certainly qualifies as a condition for strengthening bonds.  

Getting Beyond Small Talk: People Enjoy Deep Conversations with Strangers (NeuroScience News). People overestimate feelings of awkwardness when talking to strangers and underestimate the enjoyment of deep, meaningful conversations with those we have just met. 

Selflessness and Feeling in Harmony with Others Coincides with Greater Happiness (PsyPost). A study published in the Journal of Individual Differences suggests there’s more to happiness than feeling satisfied with one’s life. The study found that experiencing the self as interdependent coincided with increased happiness through feeling greater harmony with others. 

Why we Missed Hugs (The Conversation). Similar to regular hunger, touch hunger serves as an alert that something important is missing – in this case, the sense of security, intimacy, and care that comes with tactile contact. 

Express Yourself 

Twirl to Happiness: Does Dance Therapy Hold Promise for Treating Anxiety and Depression? (Economic Times). Researchers understand that the majority of our daily communication is nonverbal, and traumatic memories are encoded, or stored, in nonverbal parts of the brain. 

What is it That Makes Baking Such a Soothing, Evocative Pastime? (Happiful). So, what it is that makes baking such an effective mindfulness tool, and how can we harness this to support our mental health? With help from a counsellor, and the people who have explored this connection for themselves, we’re asking the rising question: what happens when you add baking into the wellbeing mix? 

How you Decorate Your Home can Impact your Happiness (Women’s Health). Google partnered with the Arts & Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins University to explore the impact of sensory input on our minds and bodies. They designed three different rooms, and participants wore bands to track their physiological responses as they moved through each room. 

Why Doing Something Different Can Boost Well-Being (Psychology Today). A neuroscience-based method to improve happiness. Experiential diversity—going to new or different places and doing different things—can boost well-being, research suggests. 

The Benefits of Texting Your Gratitude (Psychology Today). Research suggests that expressing gratitude by texting may be just as beneficial as an in-person show of appreciation. 

Art for Happiness – How Culture can Keep us Healthy and Sane (Mostly) (Evening Standard). The Wellcome Collection is exploring happiness in its new dual exhibitions, but what role can museums and culture play in maintaining our mental health? 

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!  

How To Live a Happy Life – The Harvard Study That Started it All

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How to Live a Happy Life

The Benefits of Social Bonds For a Happy Life 

Like any scientific field, positive psychology has a raft of research and many competing voices. Yet, if there’s one thing nearly all of the scientific community agrees on, it’s that community and connection are critical elements of good mental health. The one, sure-fire way to bolster and boost your happiness is with strong relationships with friends and family.  

Studies show that social people are more happy, and happy people are also more social. The happiest people have a core group of people they can talk to and tend to have a wide community network, through activities like church or regular volunteering.  

Their close friends and family help to amplify the mental health benefits of happy times – celebrating and cheering them on when things are going well. On the flip side, happy people can depend on their friends and family when things get tough. Close friends and family provide a shoulder to cry on, and they’ll will pick you up and push you forward when you get stuck and when life gets you down.  

We know all this thanks to many, many studies. There’s this study, which showed that social engagement and connectedness may simply be the single most powerful factors for cognitive performance in old age. There’s also this 2019 study by Harvard Medical School, which revealed that people who have close social connections, have reduced levels of Cortisol (stress hormone). 

But if you want to understand the importance of building deep connections with others to your health and wellbeing, there’s one definitive study that started them all: The Harvard Study of Adult Development.  

Related reading: How To Make Friends As An Adult 

The Study That Started Them All: The Harvard Study of Adult Development 

The Study of Adult Development is a longitudinal study which aims to identify the psychosocial predictors of healthy aging. This ongoing Harvard study is considered one of the world’s longest studies of adult life – starting in 1938 during the Great Depression. 

Over that time, researchers have followed the lives of two groups of men: the Grant Study includes 268 Harvard graduates from the classes of 1939-1944 and the Glueck Study includes 456 men who grew up in the inner-city neighborhoods of Boston. 

Over more than 80 years, researchers have tracked the lives of these 724 men, following up with each one annually to ask about their work, home lives and health. Researchers sent out questionnaires, conducted in-person interviews, collected medical records from their doctors, drew blood, and scanned brains and more. These mental and physical health and social variables helped reporters understand how these factors could predict health and wellbeing in late life.  

With such a raft of information, researchers have been able to publish findings on dozens of topics, including what aspects of childhood and adult experience predict the quality of intimate relationships in late life, and how late life marriage is linked with health and wellbeing, such as these recently published papers.  

In 2015, about 60 of the original 724 men were still alive and participating in the study, most of them in their 90s. And the study had begun a new phase, called the Second Generation Study, in which researchers began studying more than 2,000 children of the original participants. 

Related reading: Are Strong Friendships the Answer to Your Covid Woes? 

What One of The World’s Longest Studies Tells us About Living a Happy Life 

So, what have we learned from this study?  

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, perhaps the most important lessons we’ve learned from this epic, ground-breaking study is that wellbeing and happiness are intricately and strongly linked to friendships, social connection and love. 

Robert Waldinger, a psychiatrist and professor at Harvard Medical School, is the fourth and current director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development. “The surprising finding is that our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships has a powerful influence on our health,” Waldinger said in The Harvard Gazette in 2017. “Taking care of your body is important, but tending to your relationships is a form of self-care too. That, I think, is the revelation.” 

The study has shown that the people who fared the best were the people who leaned into relationships, with family, with friends, with community. “It turns out that people who are more socially connected to family, to friends, to community are happier – they’re physically healthier and they live longer than people who are less well connected” said Waldinger in his widely popular 2015 Ted Talk. “The clearest message that we get from this 75-year study is this: Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.”  

On the flip side, people who are lonely or more isolated than they want to be from people are less happy and their as they reach middle age, their health declines and they end up leading shorter lives.  

In the end, it’s the quality of close friendships and relationships that mattered. When looking at the data over time, the researchers wanted to see if they could predict who would make it to their eighties and be happy.  

“When we gathered together everything we knew about them at age 50, it wasn’t their middle age cholesterol levels that predicted how they were going to grow old. It was how satisfied they were in their relationships. The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80,” said Waldinger. “And good, close relationships seem to buffer us from some of the slings and arrows of getting old. Our most happily partnered men and women reported, in their 80s, that on the days when they had more physical pain, their mood stayed just as happy. But the people who were in unhappy relationships, on the days when they reported more physical pain, it was magnified by more emotional pain.” 

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!   

How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life

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How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life

What is a Psychologically Rich Life?

We talk a lot about happiness and how to achieve it on this site, but if there is one thing I have learned in my exploration of happiness, it’s that achieving happiness is extremely subjective. What works for one person won’t necessarily work for someone else. But, the journey of finding what works can be more fun, bring more joy and lead to greater self-discovery than finding the right happiness habits on day one. 

So, I always love finding a new theory or way of looking at the pursuit of happiness, and this week I discovered the work of University of Virginia psychologist, Shigehiro Oishi, who defines happiness and wellbeing as a ‘psychologically rich life.’  

According to Oishi, a psychologically rich life is characterised by variety, depth, and interest. It is a life without boredom, and full of novel experiences. As someone who gets bored far too easily, this kind of happiness appeals to me! 

What’s interesting about this theory is that ‘novel’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘pleasant’ experiences. In fact, the research shows that experiencing things that push our limits or push us out of our comfort zone can be extremely beneficial to our mental health, often resulting in great feelings of accomplishment, gratitude or personal growth.  

Recent research into understanding good stress verses bad stress back up this idea. For example, University of Rochester psychologists found that re-evaluating how you perceive stress can positively impact your mental health, general wellbeing, and success. Their study, which was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, found that training students to treat their stress response as a useful tool helped them to reduce anxiety. The shift in perception also helped them get better marks on tests, procrastinate less, stay enrolled in classes, and respond to academic challenges in a healthier way. The study builds on his earlier research on optimising stress responses. 

Psychologist Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman agrees. “The psychologically rich life is full of complex mental engagement, a wide range of intense and deep emotions, and diverse, novel, surprising and interesting experiences. Sometimes the experiences are pleasant, sometimes they are meaningful, and sometimes they are neither pleasant nor meaningful. However, they are rarely boring or monotonous,” says Kaufman, who describes himself as a cognitive scientist and humanistic psychologist exploring the mind, creativity, and the depths of human potential. 

“Recent research on psychological richness has found that it is related to, but partially distinct from, both happy and meaningful lives. Psychological richness is much more strongly correlated with curiosity, openness to experience and experiencing both positive and negative emotions more intensely,” says Kaufman in a recent article the Scientific American. 

Dr Kaufman talks about the psychologically rich life as including: 

  • Deep emotions 
  • Diverse experiences 
  • Novel experiences 
  • Surprising experiences, and 
  • Interesting experiences. 

So how do you know if you’re living a psychologically rich life or just a ho-hum, comfortable life? Well, Oishi has a simple test for that. 

Take the Test! Are you living a Psychologically Rich Life? 

In their research, Oishi’s team poses questions to measure a person’s level of psychological richness, or propensity toward novel experiences. So, if you’re up for it, it’s time to do some soul-searching and see how you rate the below statements. Grab a pen and paper and write down the answers on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) and see how you go. What you do with your final score is up to you. 

  • I have had a lot of novel experiences. 
  • My life has been full of unique, unusual experiences. 
  • My life consists of rich, intense moments. 
  • I experience a full range of emotions via first-hand experiences such as travel and attending concerts. 
  • I have a lot of personal stories to tell others. 
  • On my deathbed, I am likely to say ‘‘I had an interesting life.” 
  • On my deathbed, I am likely to say ‘‘I have seen and learned a lot.” 

How to Live a more Psychologically Rich Life 

If your above answers leave a little to be desired, there is so much you can do to get your life back on track. Here are three ways to challenge yourself that are also proven to positively impact your mental health. 

  1. Travel somewhere new: People dreaming of travel post-COVID-19 now have some scientific data to support their wanderlust. A new study shows frequent travellers are happier with their lives than people who don’t travel at all. 
  1. Do an online course: A study found that participants in online psychology courses saw increases in well-being from their baseline measures. If these classes have long-term benefits, they could become reliable public health interventions. 
  1. Find Your Purpose or Pleasure: (Psychology Today). Some argue that a sense of purpose is the key to healthy aging; others maintain that fun is more important. Research bolsters the idea that purpose is highly beneficial as we age, but some research also points to pleasure as essential for healthy mood. Creatively combining pleasure and purpose in these 7 ways might yield the best results. 

If none of those ideas takes your fancy, then take a look at this fab article I found called “30 fun things to do if your summer holiday has been cancelled” for some inspiration for fun things to do.   

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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!  

Covid Burnout and Why You Need a Holiday Pronto (E92)

by

Happiness for Cynics podcast

This week, Marie and Pete talk about Covid burnout, how it may be affecting you and why you need a holiday pronto.

Show notes

What does Covid burnout look like? – Sourced from Covid Fatigue and Burnout: How to Cope (healthline.com)

  • Feeling cynical and emotionally exhausted. Two of the most common burnout symptoms are feeling emotionally drained and cynical about the world around you. Researchers have observed these symptoms in people who have worked in demanding environments during the pandemic. 
  • Being less effective on the job. Burnout happens when you’ve run out of personal resources. Self-doubt creeps in and, over time, you may not be able to pay as much attention to work tasks. Researchers have noticed that some people with pandemic-related burnout begin feeling like a failure at work. 
  • Having a deep sense of anxiety about the future. Your anxiety may be related to your own future or the future of your community and the wider world. Researchers think this anxiety comes from the fact that you can’t predict when the pandemic will end. When things are unpredictable, people often feel they have no control over their lives. 
  • Being less willingness to comply with health guidelines. As the pandemic drags on, more people are tiring of restrictions such as mask-wearing and social distancing. Growing tired of inconvenient public safety measures may be natural, but experts say it could prolong the pandemic even further. 

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] 

P: And we’re back.

M: We’re back.

P: Here we are. Glad to see you all again. See you? See you? We’re seeing you. Laugh.

M: We’re seeing you?

P: Yeah, we’re seeing you today. We’re exploring our auras. We’re seeing the world.

M: Nice to see you and be seen.

P: Laugh, yeah. Ok, that’s nice.

M: Yes. How you doing?

P: Really!? Been a bad week, laugh. I’ve hit saturation point, I think.

M: Okay. Too much going on?

P: Either that or I’ve hit the point where I know that it’s the end or I know that it’s close to the end.

M: Mmm.

P: And so, I’m a big believer in The Body Keeps the Score [by Dr Bessel van der Kold M.D.]

M: Yeah.

P: Which is a very good book. The body lets you know when you’ve had enough, and it will hold off if you tell it to but it will hit you in the backside, laugh!

M: But then you crack.

P: Laugh, yep.

M: And just when you take holidays you get a cold.

P: Yeah, because you’ve turned off.

M: Laugh.

P: So, I kind of have hit this week going, ‘Oh, the end is in sight and I’m up to date with everything I can actually take a little bit of a load off.’

M: Laugh.

P: Oh dear, there goes my back and there goes my face, and you know, I was all weepy eyed.

M: There goes your face?

P: Yeah, I had a bad face day on Sunday. I was out for lunch and my, my eyes just wouldn’t stop weeping.

M: Aww.

P: And my right eye started to actually close in on me.

M: I have a lazy eyelid. You have to look closely.

P: Laugh!

M: But when I get drunk! It’s out there for everyone to see.

P & M: Laugh.

P: Are you looking at me? Or around the corner?

M: Laugh, not a lazy eye. Just a lazy eyelid.

P & M: Laugh!

P: So, yeah, hitting the wall.

M: So, this is really topical, actually, because today we’re going to talk about covid burnout. We’ve spoken a bit about work burnout and World Health Organisation, a couple of years ago now, started talking about burnout as a medical condition.

P: Mmm.

M: But today we’re not talking about normal burnout. We’re talking about covid burnout.

P: How is that more specific?

M: So, the World Health Organisation defines, its pandemic fatigue so they define pandemic fatigue as being demotivated and exhausted with the demands of life during the covid crisis.

P: Hmm.

M: So, the World Health Organisation warns that this fatigue could ultimately lead to longer, more devastating pandemic. So how this plays out in real life is you know, at the beginning of the pandemic, when we were scared and unsure, we were willing to follow the rules, we chipped in and did the right thing.

P: Laugh, everyone was doing the right thing, yeah.

M: Yeah, we made, we made an effort to wear a mask even outside.

P: Yes.

M: Even when the rules were unclear.

P: Yes.

M: We kept our distance in supermarkets and followed those little stickers.

P: Laugh.

M: Just to make sure we were 1. 5 metres away.

P: Laugh.

M: And we went got our vaccines when they were made available to us in general. We even did that weird elbow bump thing for a while.

P: Ahh…

M: Did you ever do that?

P: No, I didn’t. I did the fist bump, but not the elbow bump.

M: Uh huh. We did that, because we wanted to follow the rules and chip in and do our part for society and for helping to end the pandemic.

P: True.

M: Now, over time, we’re not as fearful. We kind of know what to expect we’re more frustrated, right?

P: I agree with that. Yeah.

M: So, this has been going on for a really long time and to be quite frank we’re just tired of it all.

P: Hmm.

M: So, that’s when exhaustion and complacency set in. And that’s what we’re talking about when we talk about covid burnout.

P: Mmm. Would you be able to apply this to maybe other pandemics like the Spanish flu as well?

M: You can apply it to any negative long events. So, if anyone’s ever cared for someone who’s terminally ill –

P: Yes.

M: – for a particularly long period of time, you can burn out with that.

P: Yes. Yeah, totally.

M: If you have, perhaps been in a war situation. I mean, these are extremes, right?

P: Mmm.

M: War situation. You can be extremely resilient. Humans are so resilient.

P: Very much, yeah.

M: But there comes a point where you’re just, you’re just over it.

P: I think when the threat is removed, I think what whilst you’re in the threat, you’re going, you’re in fright or flight, you’re in sympathetic nervous system response.

M: Mmm hmm.

P: You are running from the lion, and humans can do that for a very long time.

M: For a certain amount of time. But, you know, if you go back to World War II, that was a number of years. So, 1939 to 1945. I’m guessing after two, three years of, you know, Anne Frank hiding in a tiny upstairs room, she would have hit the wall at some point and gone. ‘I’m done. Maybe I want to go outside’, right? So, whether or not she did, um, I don’t know. I don’t know enough about her story even though I’ve read the book.

P: Mmm.

M: But at some point, people sort of would take more risks. She might go downstairs and look out a window.

P: Yeah, yeah. That’s true.

M: Right? There just comes a point where you go, ‘Oh, is this really worth it?’ And without any foresight and knowing when a war might end or a pandemic, how the pandemic might end or what the future could look like, It’s really hard to make rational, proper decisions.

P: Now that’s an interesting thing to explore scientifically, I imagine. What our brain does –

M: Mmm hmm.

P: – after a sustained period of fear.

M: And not only the brain, but how it impacts you physically. And there are so many studies of kids that were born during the war.

P: Mmm.

M: Not only the mental health implications on the mother and how that translated in utero to the kids and their personalities and all the rest of it, but also the physical implications of high stress.

P: Yep.

M: To the person experiencing the stress, but also they pass it through in different ways to their kids.

P: Definitely, yeah. And those hormones have an effect on foetal development.

M: Yep.

P: And more importantly on brain development.

M: Yep, absolutely.

P: Certain parts of the brain develop quicker or lag.

M: Yep. And so many of us have been in that low level fright phase, not so much flight phase for the last 18 months, which is low levels of stress, really is what we’re talking about.

P: It is, but the stimulus for the sympathetic nervous system doesn’t differentiate between stress.

M: Yep.

P: So, we could be having a less stress or more stress but the hormonal release is the same. The access which is activated to the adrenal glands still fires. So, the body doesn’t necessarily go, ‘Oh, this is a 50% stress.’ It just goes, ‘It’s stress!’

M: Yep.

P: So, that in built reaction of the brain releasing hormones from the hypothalamus into the pituitary gland down to the adrenal cortex.

M: What does differ, though, is our reaction to that stress. And so, if it’s unmanageable, then we’ll go into anxiety, depression, etcetera and a lot of people around the world have. A lot of people have been dealing with that stress and coping with it. And this is where they’ve gone from, perhaps flourishing and dealing with good mental health and doing all the things they should to coming back to languishing in a way. And maybe we can look at what are some of the signs of this covid burnout. So, in a lot of ways, it’s very similar to normal work burnout and everyone is different.

P: Yes.

M: We read a great article from healthline talking about some of the symptoms, so things like feeling cynical and emotionally exhausted.

P: Mmm.

M: So, probably two of the most common burnout symptoms for all types of burnout is just being emotionally drained and starting to get a bit negative, just really not having that well of positivity and mental health to draw from.

P: Yeah. All of a sudden, the coffee that won’t taste right becomes a dramatic throw it against the wall kind of moment.

M: Yeah, and we’re observing a lot of that with frontline employees, your nurses and doctors who have been in it for a very long time, who started out really positive and gung ho.

P: Yep.

M: And we’re going to save as many people as we can. And now a lot of the discussion in our media is about, ‘I can’t believe they’re still not vaccinating. I’m done with this. I’m not staying in this profession.’ You know, they’ve really just had enough.

P: Mmm.

M: And they can’t see the forest for the trees. They need a holiday, really. Laugh.

P: Oh, yes.

M: They need a break from all of the stress.

P: Yeah, don’t we all get to that point sometimes where you just need –

M: You need a break.

P: – a moment to step away, yeah.

M: And no one can step away from Covid. So, that’s the catch here.

P: Yeah, you can’t escape it in a way, especially when it’s restricting your movements.

M: Yes.

P: And I’ve noticed that with a lot of my clients, the things that they’ve usually dealt with that have helped them deal with stress, they haven’t had access to.

M: Yeah, like going to the gym.

P: Yeah.

M: So, the second one is being less effective in your work. So again, burnout happens when you just run out of that well of energy and resilience.

P: Mmm.

M: And things like self-doubt start to creep in. You don’t pay as much attention to work tasks or your family and really, the negative emotions that come with that, that lack of satisfaction from doing a job, start to spiral.

P: Mmm. The self-doubt one is a big one, because that’s like a little wedge that gets inside the door, and it grows.

M: Mmm hmm.

P: It is like a cancer. It starts to spread, and so all of a sudden, you’re making rash decisions. You’re making emotional decisions.

M: Emotional, yes.

P: Not logical [decisions]. Or you’re not having that that calmness because you’re second guessing everything that you do.

M: Yep, and not only that, you’re then doing a worse job, which then reinforces that.

P: Mmm.

M: And the smallest suggestion or criticism or, you know, opportunity for improvement, otherwise known as a shit sandwich –

P: Laugh!

M: – from the boss. You get really defensive. You take it personally.

P: Yes, yeah.

M: You come home and have to vent. It gets blown out of proportion. It’s tough to get good perspective on what’s going on.

P: Mmm, mmm. I agree very much.

M: All right, so the third thing or symptom that you could be seeing if you’re experiencing Covid burnout is a sense of anxiety about the future, so heightened anxiety levels. So, that could be related to your future, whether you’re uncertain about your current job or going back out into society now that everything is opening up, your future for your community or your family or the world in general.

P: Mmm.

M: So, the anxiety comes from the fact that you can’t predict when things are going to end or how they’re going to turn out. You’ve got little control over what’s going to happen. So, again, having less resilience and having been on that heightened level of stress for such a long period of time. That’s taken away your resilience and taken away your, your stock. Your well.

P: Your well of well-being.  

M: Yep, it means that you can start dwelling on this and going down that spiral and just being more anxious in general.

P: Mmm.

M: We’re seeing a lot of that as companies return to work.

P: The workspace?

M: Yeah, and they’re asking employees to come back in. And there are quite a few people who are just really unsure about going back into the office.

P: Mmm.

M: Getting on public transport, sitting in an office space where there’s recycled air all day. All of those things that are at higher risk for catching Covid.

P: Mmm. That’s the fear factor of it all, isn’t it?

M: Mmm hmm.

P: It’s playing into that fear. So, is it possible to remove that fear? Is that where, is that part of a? I’m probably jumping ahead of the gun here. We haven’t gotten to the fourth one yet.

M: Mmm hmm. Look, if you can predict the future, you can.

P: Laugh, well true. I guess it is about addressing those areas of control and addressing the areas of resilience and doing the work that we’ve talked about in many episodes about your mental health work and your homework and your emotional understanding.

M: Mmm hmm. And we’ll get to that in the next section.

P: Ok, sorry.

M: So, the last Covid burnout.

P: [whispers] I’m going to be quiet now I’m going to go over here.  

M: Laugh, ok you go sit in the corner.

P: [whispers] I’ll go sit with the cat.

M & P: Laugh!

M: So, the last burnout symptom to keep an eye out for is being less willing to comply with health guidelines.

P: Oh! This is me!

M: It’s me, too. So, today. So, we still have in our building mandatory mask wearing in common areas. So, when you go through the lifts and lobbies and today, I had to run downstairs and pick something up from a friend and I went out the door, pressed the buzzer on the lift and went, ‘Oh, I don’t have my mask, I forgot my mask.’

P: He, he.

M: ‘Oh, well, I’ll be quick.’

P: Yeah.

M: Went down the lift, out the door. Don’t tell my building manager.

P: Laugh.

M: But you know, when this first began, I would have quickly run back into the house and got my mask. This is probably the first time I’ve gone, ‘Oh well’, and done it anyway.

P: It’s very common at the moment, though.

M: Mmm hmm.

P: I’m seeing a lot of people, and I’m a big, very guilty of this, I will take my mask off to walk down the street because I’m so sick of wearing it, laugh. And when it’s a beautiful sunny day, it’s like I just want to enjoy it. And if I’ve got my [mask]. When the Covid ban was still in and we were still being obliged to wear masks, I would walk away from people. If they were walking against me, I would maintain the 1.5 metre distance –

M: Mmm hmm.

P: – but I’d have the mask down, I must admit. It was just a sense of freedom for me.

M: Yep.

P: And it was that, I think what you’re saying here is right is that willingness to comply. My willingness is gone. It’s like, I’m over this. I don’t want to do this anymore. And, you know, we haven’t had a COVID case in that area yet, and I was like ‘Oh bugger it, I’m just going to walk down the street without my mask on and enjoy the sunshine.

M: Yep, yep.

P: But only in that one moment.

M: Yep. And everyone is getting to that point now.

P: Mmm.

M: To varying degrees, we’re just over it, just over it.

P: Yeah.

M: So, what that means for how far you’re willing to break the rules probably comes down to whether you’re naturally a rule breaker or whether you believe in rules? I imagine, if you’re a big bang theory person –

P: Laughter!

M: – Sheldon would still be wearing his mask, laugh.

P: He would be doing virtual presence.

M & P: Laugh!

M: Mmm hmm. So, what all this means is, we’ve spoken before about the difference between flourishing and languishing. And when we’re flourishing, we’re at our peak mental health. We’re not simply living life, but we’re loving life.

P: Yep.

M: What we’re talking about here is that a lot of us are coming from the top end where you find passion, energy, excitement, love, awe and hope.

P: Mmm.

M: And we’re moving into this languishing space, which is not the negative mental health space. It’s not depression, anxiety and a place where you really should be seeking professional help.

P: Yep.

M: It’s really well summed up as just ‘meh.’

P: Bleurgh. Yeah, right. Does that affect the people who are more used to being in that upper space a little bit more?

M: You would probably notice a difference more, but this is a phenomenon we’ve spoken about before, and I think Episode 70 we’ve talked about from languishing to flourishing.

P: Yes.

M: And so if you’re normally a ten on the scale or a nine and you’re now sitting at a six, that ‘meh’, you know, you’re not in the under five space where you really need to take action and there are serious consequences for not.

P: Yep.

M: You’re not in the ill health space.

P: Mmm hmm.

M: You’re just kind of going through the motions of life. You know, what a waste of your life in that space for too long.

P: Laugh, yeah. And that’s where the techniques that we talk about, I think can come in really, really advantageously. The first one that comes to mind for me is the physicality shaking off literally do a Tay Tay [Taylor Swift].

M: Laugh!

P: Go out running, running out into the world half naked, for example and just go “Aaaahh!!’

M: Legally.

P: Yeah, completely legally, where a sarong, do something crazy, wear a crazy hat put a wig on. Do something that’s going to shake yourself up physically and that’s enough sometimes to flip that switch and get just that little bit out of languishing I feel.

M: Yep, absolutely. So, let’s go into what we can do.

P: Oh, I did it again, didn’t I? Laugh.

M: How can you take action?

P: [whispers] I’ll go sit in my corner now.

M: Well, no. We’re in this section now.

P: Oh good! I’ll get out of my corner now, laugh.

M: So, the first step is to be aware. And just by listening to this podcast, you are at least starting to think about whether or not you’re struggling.

P: Yeah.

M: Whether you’re losing focus or energy. So, now that you are a little bit more aware of the dangers of Covid burnout. It’s a great idea to take a little bit of time to see whether the signs apply to you and look at how you’re tracking.

P: Mmm.

M: Secondly, as we said before, if you’re feeling overwhelmed or unable to move forward, or if you have dropped into that mental ill health. So, if your anxiety levels are too high for you to manage or you think you’ve moved into depression, seek professional help.

P: Yes.

M: And then thirdly, I’m gonna say, work out. So, if you find you’ve been languishing, you might need a mental fitness plan to build up your mental strength.

P: Yeah.

M: And this is where Tay Tay comes in, Pete.

P: Laugh, yeah.

M: And many of the other things, I think for me the one thing that can really help to turn things around here is, book a holiday.

P: Yeah, and planning for the holiday is often enough to actually shake that, shake off those blues.

M: Mmm hmm.

P: It gives you focus. It gives you a goal to work towards. It’s got so many positives in it, and a holiday doesn’t have to be overseas, it can be up the coast for an hour.

M: Yep, absolutely. Not only that, but research also shows that planning future travel boosts mood and mindset. But also, when you do get there, get out and get some sun and do some walking and see nature. All of those things that we have talked about that bring positive mental impacts.

P: Yeah.

M: So, the next thing that I would recommend is, why not start taking a daily walk? Get outside regularly.

P: Mmm.

M: You can add, 10 minutes only. If you’ve only got 10 minutes.

P: Mmm.

M: Really good way to turn your mental health around and to start building that mental fitness.

P: And it’s good for your brain. The physical activity has so many benefits for brain activity and accessing positive emotions.

M: Yep, do you have any more recommendations? I’ve got one more before we wrap up.

P: I still think running around in a sarong this with the crazy wig on does it for me.

M: Laugh. Wig, ooh.

P: Yeah, I put a wig on. I’ve got a unicorn hat that I could use.

M: Laugh, I wonder who bought you that!

P: Laughter!

M: All right, well, lastly, then one that we don’t talk about enough, but which is so powerful is to practise love and kindness.

P: [soft sigh] Aahhh.

M: Yeah, so research shows that helping others through acts of charity or volunteer work can make you feel better and happier.

P: Mmm.

M: But more recent research finds that simply wishing someone well can have a similarly positive effect on our moods. So, really easy task for you to take from today is if you just kind of feeling a bit ‘meh’, put into your diary once a week to send a note, could be a text message, it could be an email, or you could pick up the phone and send someone a note to wish them well and let them know you’re thinking about them.

P: Mmm, I’ve got a good one for that too. Make a cake.

M: I love it.

P: Give it to your neighbours.

M: There’s two things there. So, the mindfulness of baking, which is a whole other episode.

P: Laugh. I think we just came up with another episode title.

M: And then giving it away as well and doing something nice for others.

P: Yep, and it doesn’t need to be the next-door neighbour, it can be the old lady down the street constantly telling you to put your bin inside the garage.

M: Tsk, tsk, tsk. Pete.

P: Laugh. Take her a few muffins. No, she likes me because I cleaned up the back alley garden.

M: Aww.

P: Jennifer, I know you’re not listening, but I love you.

M: Aww.

P: She has been my neighbour for 12 years.

M: Alright.

P: And now she talks to me all the time, laugh.

M: So, on that note, we might finish up for this week and hopefully, you are not feeling the effects of Covid burnout. But if so, hopefully you can take some ideas to help move you forward and take you from languishing back up to flourishing.

P: Oh! I want to do a pirouette.

M: But we won’t, so good night, laugh.

P: [whispers] I’ll go back in my corner.

M: We’re not doing TV, Pete.

P: Oh, damnit. Laugh! Have a happy week.

M: Let’s just say you did.

P & M: Laugh.

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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