Strengths

Happiness for Cynics podcast

This week, Marie and Pete talk about self-awareness and “To Be” lists, what they are and why you need to create one.

Show notes

Character Strengths

Click on the following link to do a free online survey to find out what your strengths are and how they can help you. VIA strengths assessment 

How to know what you want to change or reinforce? 

Ask yourself the question, On your deathbed, what would you regret? Or what would you change?

Create Your “To Be” List

Think about and then write down five values or attributes that you would like to incorporate into your life. These can be things that you already excel at or just wish to improve. Whatever they are focus on your emotional growth. This is my (Marie) to do list to show as an example.

1. Kind and caring 

2. Fun and happy (bring joy to others) 

3. Accepting and non-judgmental 

4. Honest 

5. Present 

Use reminders to make positive change. Creating a “to be” list is about giving yourself a reminder for things that aren’t part of who you are. When they become second nature, you can remove the daily reminders.

Transcript

Creating You “To Be” List (E90) 

[Happy intro music -background] 

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

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

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

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

[Intro music fadeout] 

M: Hey, hey!

P: How are you, Muz?

M: I’m good. How are you?

P: I am happy this week because someone’s coming back to Sydney.

M: Oh, I am.

P: My best friend is coming back to Sydney.

M: Yay! That’s me!

P: Yeah, it’s all about you, laugh!

M: And we’re in the same five k (km) zone.

P: Ah.

M: So, we can picnic as much as we want.

P: Laugh.

M: So, what are we talking about today?

P: Ooh, we are talking about [Shakespearian accent] “To be or not to be. That is the question.” Let’s make a “To Be” List!

M: So, we will get into “To Be” lists in a second. But really, what we’re talking about is improving your own emotional intelligence checking in with yourself.

P: Mmm.

M: All of the soppy, 21st century,

P: Laugh.

M: BS.

P: Laugh, the stuff that you turned your back on before you visited all this happiness bullshit.

M: [The stuff] that is so important for an open and happy life.

P: The tools, the tools that actually help you to be happier.

M: Absolutely.

P: Which we talk about a lot.

M: We do talk about how to be happy a lot.

P: Mmm.

M: It’s kind of the reason we exist, isn’t it?

P: Laugh, I guess so.

M: Not existentially.

P: Laugh.

M: Although, I would argue that maybe we do exist to be happy, that’s a whole other season.

P: That’s a nice thought. I liked that thought. We should exist to be happy. We shouldn’t be. Yes, we shouldn’t be toiling and working away at things that don’t improve our level of enjoyment of life. Why bother? Laugh.

M: I’m with you. Mm.

P: One of the sort of roundabouts that we came to in discussing today’s episode was the value of self-awareness.

M: Oh.

P: Now, if we throw back Marie to when you were pre-Happiness for Cynics.

M: Pre-accident.

P: Laugh, pre-accident. If I said to you, pre-accident, I had said to you, “self-awareness.” What would that have meant to you? If you can cast your mind back to being that cynical person?

M: … Idiots who have no idea of what they, you know, the havoc they wreak at work.

P: Laugh.

M: Or the impact they have on people around them. Very low opinion of people with no self-awareness. But what’s funny now that I’ve grown more mature.

P: Laugh.

M: Aged, we’ll say, and have more experience is that there’s a lot of high functioning people out there with no understanding of their own self, and a lot of them work in the finance industry, I’ve come to realise.

P: Ahh, ok right.

M: Laugh.

P: Your industry?

M: My industry.

P & M: Laugh.

M: Yes, a lot of people with big egos and really to switch is neutral and angry.

P: Interesting, yeah. Do you think those people are aware of their happiness and aware of their access being content and happiness?

M: I think these are the people who are on that hedonic treadmill that we’ve talked about, right?

P: Yep.

M: They’re the ones who get their happiness from the positive affect in their life. So, when they get the promotion, when they get the bigger house, they compare themselves to others quite often.

P: Yep.

M: And they look at their success in comparison to those around them in their friendship circles and in their neighbourhoods. And if they’re doing well on that front, then they believe they are happy. But as you and I both know, that type of happiness is only ever a short lived and then you’re striving for the next thing.

P: Yes.

M: And so, I think they spend a lot of their times on that treadmill there. They’re the rat in the rat race running around in circles just for that one moment where they get the promotion, and they go out to dinner and pop a bottle of champagne.

P: Yep, yep.

M: And they would argue that their lives better.

P: Mmm.

M: Than your life or my life because they’re got more.

P: Yes.

M: They’ve got more success; they’ve got more recognition.

P: Laugh!

M: They’ve got more, more, more.

P: I’m going to quote Cruella Deville here “You fools, you idiots, you imbeciles!”

M: Laugh! And that was where I was stuck pre-accident, right? And I was doing well. I was being successful at life, which is what I was told mattered. And, boy is it a 180 when… and I feel like I’ve joined the hippies.

P: Laugh!

M: I really do.

P: [Singing] “Let, the sunshine!” You’ve got roses in your hair and you’re running around naked with a sarong. Oh, I’m sorry, that’s me.

M & P: Laugh.

P: Interestingly enough, I come from the other side of the perspective with my new chosen career path that I’m going down and we’ve actually been doing a lot of technical study in one of my units at uni on self-awareness and the value of self-awareness as a health professional and that whole concept of being self-aware so that you can better inform or better deal with others.

M: Mmm.

P: And being in, in the non-finance industry, which is probably a complete flip. In the health care industry where you are there to trying to take care of other people and make other people feel better. There’s a lot of research that supports the placebo effect and that sometimes it is not about the physical intervention of what you’re doing to the person’s body. It’s actually about being a nice person to them and making them feel better. That actually has a lot of value in terms of making someone feel better about an illness or a disease or their situation.

M: Or in convincing them to take action.

P: Yes, oh yes, we’re going to come to that one.

M: And I will absolutely say that it might not be immediately apparent. But the finance industry needs this just as much as the health care industry.

P: Hmm?

M: So, insurance, where I am right now, people are calling up and they’ve just had their house burned down, with their pets inside.

P: Yeah…

M: Or they’ve had a car accident and they don’t know how they’re going to support their family for the next three months because they’re in retail and they’ve broken their leg.

P: Yep.

M: Or, you know, on and on and on and on. And an ability for someone to answer a phone and to behave… like a human being, laugh.

P: Laugh.

M: With empathy and care.

P: Yes.

M: It is so important. And similarly with banks where oftentimes, when things are going good, you don’t call your bank. You call when things are going wrong, you know? When you’ve lost your job, when you can’t make a payment, etcetera, etcetera.

P: Yeah.

M: Again, just so important for people to be able to have enough self-awareness that they’re not carrying all of their baggage into every conversation that they have in life, whether it’s at work or with people around them.

P: Mmm. One of the direct quotes that I’ve got here from one of the texts that I’ve got from a tool is that “self-awareness increases self-understanding to the point of being able to control your emotions, thoughts and behaviours.”

M: Yep.

P: You can look at all these finance people who are walking into meetings or conferences, and if you just come out of a really stressful interaction or a really aggressive confrontation, how to get control of those emotions. How to find that still point where you actually can control yourself to enter each new conversation at a base level.

M: Or more to the point when I’m having a tense, angry conversation with someone, I know that they’re getting angry because of their baggage, and it has nothing to do with me.

P: Yes.

M: So, I don’t need to escalate.

P: Yeah.

M: So, I need to be detached from their emotions and understand it’s got absolutely nothing to do with me. It happens really often, particularly in customer service. People come in angry.

P: Yep.

M: And so, just being able to understand others better.

P: Yeah, balance the demands of the interaction.

M: Yep.

P: Balancing everything from the perspective.

M: Yep.

P: Yep.

M: Martin Seligman is big on strengths and understanding your strengths and big [on] understanding yourself in order to be more emotionally aware and in order to open yourself up to happiness and be happy. We’ve spoken about before, you can go to the Penn State website and download for free the VIA Strengths Assessment, in order to better understand your own strengths so that you can double down on those the thinking used to be that you want to be well rounded in everything so you focus on your weaknesses in order to become better at them.

P: Yes, yeah.

M: Nah. It’s BS. Throw that out.

P: Laugh!

M: The thinking has evolved, double down on your strengths so that you can do things in which you can succeed easily and continue to make that part of what you do day in, day out. Who doesn’t want to succeed more often?

P: Absolutely. One of the ways of actually focusing on your strengths is assessing those strengths and asking the right questions of yourself.

M: Yes, the other day, poor Francis.

P: Laugh.

M: I am still studying with Happiness Studies Academy, which is amazing, and every week is just opening my mind to so much new thinking and what I do love about Tal-Ben Shahar is that he started his studies in philosophy. So, we get a real cross of psychology with philosophy and, you know, ancient thinkers and amazing texts to read.

P: Laugh.

M: But one of the things that he was talking about in last week’s class was, you know, on your death bed, what would you regret? Or what would you wish you’d done more or less of?

P: Oh, that’s a good question. Laugh.

M: So, I went running in and my husband was in the shower, and I was like, ‘Great, you’re trapped and have to talk.’

P: Laugh! You trapped him in the shower recess with his naked body so that he couldn’t leave. Laugh!

M: Exactly. I pulled the toilet seat down and sat down and went, ‘Okay, here we go.’

P: And he finally went, ‘Oh, dear, I’m stuck. I have to talk to her.’

M: Pretty much, laugh. You can picture it, can’t you?

P: I can actually, laugh!

M: So, you know, and again, it’s just a great exercise to ask yourself if you were on your deathbed tomorrow, what would you regret about your life? Or if regret is too strong a word? Because for me, I try to live a no regrets life, you learn, you don’t regret, and you learn that there are things that you don’t want to do ever again rather than you regret.

P: Ok.

M: So that’s personally just a mantra I live by.

P: Ok.

M: But there are things that I would change in my life. So, another way of asking that is on your deathbed, ‘what would you say you wish you’d done more or less of?’ So, for example, some of us might say I wish I had spent less time at work.

P: Yeah, yeah.

M: Or I wish I’d spent more time with my family or I wish I had spent less time stressing or worrying.

P: You mentioned that you were talking about before the episode Marie that this helps to clarify what’s important.

M: Mmm hmm.

P: And I think that that’s really vital. And again, this comes back to self-awareness and doing the work of being self-aware and doing some self-reflection time, so that you ask those important questions and really can clarify. So that when someone like you slams you in the shower –

M: Laughter!

P: – and they sit down on the toilet, they’re going ‘right Pete.’ You’ve got the answers, you know what’s going on and that consciousness and that awareness of those answers and questions, I think is really powerful, because when you’re faced with a choice, you have the tools ‘you’re like, well, I know that this matches with my values, so I’m going to go this route.’

M: And really, this is what it’s all about. So, we spoke ages ago about authenticity and the importance of authenticity. So, when your values and your behaviours and your actions and your thoughts all align, then you can live a happy life.

P: And that’s a lot of work.

M: It is.

P: Having those four elements, it’s tough.

M: And if you’re not checking in with your values and your thoughts and your behaviours on a regular basis, they change over time.

P: Exactly, yeah.

M: So you’ve got to keep going back to them and making sure they’re still valid. And the person I was when I was 20 is very different from the person I am now.

P: Mmm, mm, yeah.

M: But I wouldn’t I give yourself a must check in. I would highly recommend journaling. And for me, that’s been a real catalyst for better understanding myself. And you can do the one sentence journal.

P: Yep.

M: You know. Every day, ‘what have I learned about myself?’ One sentence. So, one of the great ways that we like to one of the great ways that I like to, or I have reflected on my life is with a “To Be” list.

P: Mmm.

M: So, it’s sitting on my whiteboard behind me,

P: Laugh.

M: which Pete can see and essentially a “To Be” list, is my daily reminder, because I come into this room every morning and I sit down to do my writing and then to do my work for the day. I sit down and I walk past my “To Be” list and this is a list of five things that I want to be.

P: Mmm.

M: So, when I asked myself, what would I wish I’d done more or less of on my deathbed? For me, the things that I wish I’d done more of is understand myself, when I was younger, pre-accident, my life is very much a pre-accident and post-accident.

P & M: Laugh!

M: Chapter one and chapter two kind of thing.

P: Yeah, yeah.

M: So, pre-accident I’d spent way too much time at work. I’ve spent way too much time trying to be perfect, being a perfectionist and worrying and stressing about things that weren’t perfect. And I’d spent way too much time trying to succeed. And I wish I’d spent more time understanding myself in order to be happier.

P: Mmm mm.

M: And my “To Be” list kind of extends on that. So, I’ll read through my five and then Pete, I’m going to put you on the spot.

P: Oh!

M: And ask you – calm down.

P & M: Laugh.

M: And this is, you know, another take on ‘you are what you eat.’

P: Oh yeah, I like that.

M: Or you put out into the world, and you behave in a way that you yourself focus on being. So, this is about setting up a reminder, you could put it on your desktop, or you could write it on your whiteboard like I did.

And it’s about reminding myself to make sure that I prioritise these things in my life that make me who I want to be. And when they become second nature, you can remove those reminders so you can set yourself up a calendar reminder or a phone alarm. Great way to just make sure you’re reminding yourself to ensure that that change happens.

P: Mmm.

M: So, my five are:

• I want to be Kind and Caring.
• I want to be Fun and Happy.
• I want to be Accepting and Non-judgmental, and for me, this is really about slowing down.

M: I get busy and I don’t stop to put myself in other people’s shoes and then to understand the other person sitting across from me. I am, as I mentioned before, I tend to go towards perfectionism and stress, so being accepting and nonjudgmental and really stopping to listen.

• Number four is Honest, and I have a really strong radar for right and wrong and fair. So that’s a value that I strongly believe in is honesty, and
• Five is Present. and this is again an area that I think I have a lot more growth to experience. But I would like to be more present more often. And when I am, I notice my mental well-being is so much better.

M: So, this list is somewhat aspirational, somewhat already part of who I am, you know, and there are some gaps that are bigger maybe in others as far as reconciling who I want to be and who I am today.

P: I like the fact that it’s both reflective and prospective.

M: Yes, I fail at these quite often.

P & M: Laughter.

P: It’s the giving yourself permission to fail as well. And it’s there. And it’s the, the wonderful thing is to know when you have failed.

M: Mmm hmm.

P: I think that’s really, that’s being present. That’s really understanding that, ‘Oh, I didn’t do that very well or I could have done that better’, because next time when you’re faced with that situation, you may well just do it better, because you you’ve got that self-awareness enough and you’ve actually spent some time reflecting on ‘Ooh, was that the right way to approach that situation, or did I perform that well enough? Maybe I can increase this aspect.’

M: Mmm hmm.

P: And you won’t get that clarity unless you spent some time sitting with that uncomfortable [understanding] as we talked about before.

M: Yep. Absolutely. All right, so in the last few minutes, what would you have on your “To Be” list?

P: Oh. I’ve been madly scribbling here whilst you, uh, were talking, laugh.

M: Maybe you added something to your list, active listening. Laugh.

P: Oh, I got assist on that last week. I was fabulous! Laugh!

M: Ok! …

P: Laugh. All right. So, I’ve got four. I’ll have to come up with the fifth one, but first one is

• Aware.

M: Aware?

P: Actually aware, being more aware of myself in space and others around my space. So that’s one that I think that I like and just stopping very quickly here and reflecting on what I just said about you, Marie, I’ve tried to include some retrospective and some prospective stuff in this.

M: Mmm hmm.

P: So, this next one you’re going to laugh at and this is definitely me when I was up until maybe age 30.

• Less Dramatic.

M: Oh Why!?

P: Laugh! There’s a negative side to be dramatic. There’s a positive side, I will clarify that, but yeah, less inclined to jump to emotional conclusions.

M: Oh.

P: And I think this was me before I discovered this self-awareness and my study in Buddhism and the present being and then all that sort of compassion work. I was so inclined to jump down the throat of anyone that didn’t agree with my opinion or see the negative straight away. It was like instead of actually going, ‘Oh, what’s their perspectives?’ So that’s a really important one for me is curtailing my emotional responses.

M: I only ever get positive emotional responses from you I feel.

P: Oh, you’re so nice to me, oh my Lord. This is why I like you.

M & P: Laugh!

M: Because we feed each other’s egos.

P: We do. Exactly.

M: Laughter!

P: And this is why we’re fabulous.

• My third one is Generous, generosity.

And again, I think that I fail at this sometimes in my, in my current state. Yeah, I’d like to be more generous. I’d like to. I like to do half a shit that I say I’m going to do.

M: Can I tell you about the last time I tried generous? I know we’re running over time, so I’ll make this quick. We were driving on a Sunday, and we passed an elderly gentleman coming up the hill on his bicycle and it was starting to rain.

P: Oh wow.

M: And I said to my husband, we should stop and offer him a lift. We’re in the ute. We could have thrown the bike in the back. Could have given him a lift. And he turned the corner, because we we’re turning the corner and he was like, ‘Really? Do you really mean that?’ and I was like, ‘Well, kind of yeah I do.’ And he was like, ‘well, should I turn around?’ and I was like, ‘Oh, well, now we’ve gone…’, like by this stage, we’ve gone further on, and I couldn’t actually then, like anyway, it ended up becoming an argument. Laugh!

P: Oh dear. Laugh! All from the good intentions of being generous. And the kind Samaritan.

M: Yes. Yeah. Anyway, that was me trying to be nice, but ah fail.

P: Oh well…

M: All right, what’s your last one?

P: My last one. Oh, I have to think of one… I would have to say.

M: Didn’t you say you had four?

P: I have four. But I don’t like this last one because I kind of covered in the last one about being generous.

M: Okay, we’ll leave it at three for today, because it did put you on the spot.

P: No, I’m going to give you this one,

• Being Committed.

M: Laugh, I can commit you. That’s easy.

P: Laugh!

M: There’s a home down the road.

P: No thanks Muz. Being committed. So, committing to myself and committing to my own expectations, but also the expectations that I set for other people and that other people might sit for me. So, following through, following through.

M: Mmm.

P: I say something I want to follow through on it.

M: Mmm, I like it. And Forgive Yourself if you don’t.

P: That can be number five.

M: Laugh.

P: Thanks, Muz.

M: Alright. Well, on that note, I do hope that if you’re listening that you take these two activities. Actually, we snuck a second one in there. Even though the title of this is creating your “To Be” list, the second one in there is the exercise of what would you regret or wish you’d done more or less of on your deathbed? Really great little exercise to help you unpack, whether your life is where it should be and whether you’re spending time in the right places.

P: Yes.

M: And then this other one is to write yourself a “To Be” list. And not only that, but to set yourself a reminder. So put it somewhere visual, up on the wall or something, or put it into your phone. Once you’ve got it written down and set yourself an alarm or a calendar reminder.

P: Put it on the fridge.

M: There you go. All right. Well, have a happy week.

[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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