Speaker 1: Pushkin. This special episode of the Happiness Lab is brought
Speaker 1: to you by State Farm. Like a good neighbor, State
Speaker 1: Farm is there. October tenth is World Mental Health Day.
Speaker 1: It's an annual chance to talk about our mental well being,
Speaker 1: to take the opportunity to look at the challenges we're
Speaker 1: all facing and explore strategies that we can use to
Speaker 1: prevent things like anxiety, depression, and product stress. The world
Speaker 1: of podcasting is full of shows with great advice on
Speaker 1: improving well being, so a few of us decided to
Speaker 1: get together and pool our expertise, and today's guest list
Speaker 1: is pretty impressive, so much so that I've decided to
Speaker 1: refer to today's crew as the Titans of Happiness. Doctor
Speaker 1: Joey Harden Bradford is a clinical psychologist who you may
Speaker 1: better know as the host of the podcast Therapy for
Speaker 1: Black Girls. Gretchen Rubin is the og of well Being Experts.
Speaker 1: She's written a bunch of best selling happiness books, most
Speaker 1: recently Life in Five Senses. She also created a podcast
Speaker 1: called Happier with Gretchen Rubin. Titan number three is Dan Harris.
Speaker 1: Dan was a TV news anchor who, after having a
Speaker 1: panic attack live on air, began looking into mindfulness meditation practices.
Speaker 1: He now devotes himself to his podcast ten Percent Happier
Speaker 1: and his new listener community, which you should check out
Speaker 1: at Dan Harris dot com. And since I wanted this
Speaker 1: to be an extra special show, I invited one extra
Speaker 1: extra special guest. Earlier this year, he sent out a
Speaker 1: very simple message on social media, checking in on all
Speaker 1: of us. How is everybody doing? He asked. Two hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty million people saw his message, and tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of them replied all the way from presidents to
Speaker 1: Paddington Baar. That post was made by my friend Sesame Streets. Elmo.
Speaker 2: Hey, Elmo, how much happiness to see you again?
Speaker 1: Oh seeing you makes me so happy to Elmo, Elma,
Speaker 1: thanks for being one of our Titans of happiness.
Speaker 2: I was a monster.
Speaker 1: Well, titans are kind of like monsters almost, I say,
Speaker 1: a monster of happiness.
Speaker 3: So that makes imu a happiness master?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you totally are.
Speaker 2: Are your friends happiness masters too?
Speaker 1: Kind of Elmo? This is Dan's Gretchen.
Speaker 3: Hello, Elmo, I'm happy to meet you and doctor Joy.
Speaker 4: Hi Elmo, hell are you you too? It's my pleasure?
Speaker 1: Oh cool, cool all right. So, first off, thanks to
Speaker 1: all my experts who have come on and agreed to
Speaker 1: be titans of happiness. I'm curious if that label makes
Speaker 1: you feel uneasy as I've sometimes felt when I've been
Speaker 1: referred to as an expert on happiness, because sometimes that
Speaker 1: feels disingenuous when I feel like I'm working just as
Speaker 1: hard on my own happiness and trying to figure this
Speaker 1: out as much as everybody. I don't know if others
Speaker 1: can relate there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I will definitely say that doesn't feel like a
Speaker 4: term I would give myself. But I think I am
Speaker 4: also reminded that to be helpful to other people, you
Speaker 4: only need to be like a step or two a head,
Speaker 4: and so I don't have to be, you know, twelve
Speaker 4: thousand steps ahead to be able to have something to offer.
Speaker 4: And so I think I am getting more comfortable with
Speaker 4: the idea that I've gone to school for a very
Speaker 4: long time to share some things with my community that
Speaker 4: can can be really helpful to them.
Speaker 3: Exactly. I would say that for me, research is mesearch, and.
Speaker 5: I'm always guided in my explorations by trying to figure
Speaker 5: out what's going to work for me, and a long
Speaker 5: way I find well, something works really well for some
Speaker 5: people but not for me, Like meditation works so well
Speaker 5: for Dan, I can learn from that. So yeah, I
Speaker 5: don't think of myself as somebody who's figured it all out,
Speaker 5: but somebody who's just really interested in exploring it and
Speaker 5: thinking about it and trying to gather the ideas and
Speaker 5: make sense of all the research and thought provoking ideas that.
Speaker 1: Are out in the world. Dan, does that resonate to
Speaker 1: the idea of research as mesearch totally.
Speaker 6: One of my little jokes is that some experts teach
Speaker 6: from the mountaintop and I teach from the fetal position.
Speaker 6: And I very much have plenty of issues that I
Speaker 6: struggle with, and you know, I think a cornerstone of
Speaker 6: my work and I see this in all of your work,
Speaker 6: which is why I'm grateful to know all of you.
Speaker 6: Is a willingness to be open about my struggles as
Speaker 6: a way to illustrate that it's okay to have your
Speaker 6: own stuff and that there are ways to work on it.
Speaker 1: So you all here because I like to consider it
Speaker 1: this group the Titans of Happiness, right, folks that I
Speaker 1: turn to when I'm looking for a great advice on
Speaker 1: how we can all improve our mental health. And we're
Speaker 1: here on World Mental Health Day, and I think it's
Speaker 1: a salient World Mental Health Day here in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: becaus I think a lot of us are struggling when
Speaker 1: it comes to our mental health, and the goal for
Speaker 1: this conversation is to figure out some strategies that we
Speaker 1: can all use to sort of feel better and maybe
Speaker 1: even to do a deep dive into some of the
Speaker 1: problems with mental health that I think so many of
Speaker 1: us are facing. And I think a real big one,
Speaker 1: at least when it comes to what folks like Surgeon
Speaker 1: General'll talk about and so on, is loneliness. This crisis
Speaker 1: that we're all kind of in need of social connection. Dan,
Speaker 1: maybe let me start with you.
Speaker 7: What do I think of it? I think it's a
Speaker 7: huge problem.
Speaker 6: We live in an individualistic society that's to a certain
Speaker 6: extent healthy, but we have perfected the art of unhealthy individualism,
Speaker 6: and it shows up over time in increasingly pernicious ways.
Speaker 6: We're living alone and now with technology, basically everything about
Speaker 6: modern life militates against actual human to human social interaction.
Speaker 6: And I believe this is one of the contributing factors
Speaker 6: to the epidemic of mental health issues. We're seeing anxiety, suicide, addiction, depression,
Speaker 6: and loneliness.
Speaker 7: So what do you do about it?
Speaker 6: Well, one of the best tips I've heard comes from
Speaker 6: the Surgeon General himself, doctor Vivik Murphy, and it's a
Speaker 6: counterintuitive piece of advice. In part that's why I like
Speaker 6: it so much. It is, if you are feeling lonely
Speaker 6: to volunteer. Volunteering puts you in touch with other people,
Speaker 6: reminds you of your own self worth. It's inherently ennobling
Speaker 6: and kind of, as I like to say, you know,
Speaker 6: it helps you pull your head out of your ass.
Speaker 6: So that, to me, is the piece of advice that
Speaker 6: seems to be among the most powerful.
Speaker 1: I love that because it, you know, first helps with
Speaker 1: social connection obviously, which we know is important for reducing loneliness,
Speaker 1: but just doing nice stuff for others is also something
Speaker 1: that we know kind of makes you feel better too,
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like a two for if you're
Speaker 1: sort of volunteering and jumping in doctor joining your clinical practice,
Speaker 1: does this come up? Do you have strategies that you
Speaker 1: turn to when people are feeling lonely?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Absolutely, And I just want to build on something that
Speaker 4: Dan mentioned because I think the technology that we all
Speaker 4: use in some ways, I think tricks us to believe
Speaker 4: that we are actually connecting with other people. And in
Speaker 4: some ways that's the case, but I think it is
Speaker 4: easy to then forget, like, oh, I haven't actually seen
Speaker 4: my best friend in like three months, because we just
Speaker 4: keep up all on what's appen, right, And so I
Speaker 4: think it is really important to pay attention to the
Speaker 4: amount of time where spending on our screens. That is
Speaker 4: one thing that I talk about pretty frequently in my practice,
Speaker 4: and I'm on the podcast is really like auditing our
Speaker 4: social media and taking account of how much time we
Speaker 4: actually are spending on our devices, because I think it
Speaker 4: is giving us the idea that we are way more
Speaker 4: connected than we actually are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of I joke with my students it's
Speaker 1: like the nutrisuite of social connection, right, Like it feels
Speaker 1: like we're getting some nutritious value from the social connection.
Speaker 1: But if anything, it's like the opposite. If anything, it's
Speaker 1: often at opportunity cost of the in real life social connection, right, Gretchen,
Speaker 1: any other thoughts on kind of loneliness and social connection.
Speaker 5: Well, just to build on what Joy and Dan said,
Speaker 5: because I completely agree, and I always remind myself that
Speaker 5: IRL is better than URL, and you've always got to
Speaker 5: like take those connections from the online version to the
Speaker 5: in real life version, and volunteering is terrific. I mean,
Speaker 5: one of the nicest things about human nature is you know,
Speaker 5: do good, feel good really works.
Speaker 3: But I think any group.
Speaker 5: Joining any group is also a really good cure for loneliness,
Speaker 5: Like whether that's birdwak, or it's a poker group, or
Speaker 5: it's a book club, or it's a volunteer group, you're
Speaker 5: meeting people at the dog walking park at the same time.
Speaker 5: Because one of the things we know is important for
Speaker 5: forming relationships is just seeing people consistently. The more we
Speaker 5: see people, the more we tend to like them. The
Speaker 5: more we see them, the more we can deepen our
Speaker 5: relationships with them. And indeed, ancient philosophers and contemporary scientists
Speaker 5: all agree that a key, maybe the key to a
Speaker 5: happy life is strong relationships with other people. So when
Speaker 5: we're thinking about how to spend our precious time, energy,
Speaker 5: and money, you know, building relationships through volunteering, through groups,
Speaker 5: through just a base to base meetup just really really central.
Speaker 1: I think it's also important that we need to build
Speaker 1: on the relationships we do have too write and we
Speaker 1: like get so focused on like, oh, let me find
Speaker 1: new friends. And this gets to something I know that
Speaker 1: Sesame Workshop has been thinking about a lot. Is this
Speaker 1: idea of reaching out? Yes, Elmo, you know what checking
Speaker 1: in with people is, right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, Ione learned from his dad chucking them needs
Speaker 2: to ask how people are doing.
Speaker 1: And you had a super big moment where you checked
Speaker 1: in on how a lot of people were doing on
Speaker 1: the social media site X.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's rue.
Speaker 1: What happened with that, bro?
Speaker 2: You know what? I want to ask how people were doing?
Speaker 2: With help from his daddy, Amma was really glad to
Speaker 2: hear from friends all around the road telling Alma how
Speaker 2: they were fun. It's important to be able to tell
Speaker 2: a friend how you feel, don't you.
Speaker 1: Think, Oh yeah, it's super important to be able to
Speaker 1: check in on your friends.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So many friends had big funds and Alma was really
Speaker 2: happy that they gets shaphim with Elmo.
Speaker 1: And in addition to Alma, we also have a visit
Speaker 1: from Samantha from Sesame Workshop and Samantha, Hi, Samantha, do
Speaker 1: you want to quickly introduce yourself. Hi. I'm Samantha Malton.
Speaker 8: I'm the chief Marketing and brand officer for Sesame Workshop,
Speaker 8: the global impact nonprofit behind Sesame Street.
Speaker 1: And so, Samantha, I'm guessing that Alma wasn't the only
Speaker 1: person at the workshop really shocked by the reaction that
Speaker 1: he got when he was checking in on so many people.
Speaker 1: Tell me what that was like for folks at the workshop.
Speaker 8: We could not have anticipated the reaction that we had.
Speaker 8: It was just incredible, and what it signaled to us
Speaker 8: is that there has never been a greater need for
Speaker 8: the work that we're doing. We ask open ended questions
Speaker 8: all the time Elmo with help from his daddy, but
Speaker 8: this time this really touched people. The idea of checking
Speaker 8: in on them sparked a response that was unlike any
Speaker 8: other we've ever had. At SESME Workshop, over three hundred
Speaker 8: million people saw his tweet and millions responded from world
Speaker 8: leaders responding to everyday people who check on Elmo every day.
Speaker 8: And I really believe that it's because of the relationship
Speaker 8: that they felt towards Elmo. Is such a sense of
Speaker 8: loneliness and people feeling like they are on their own
Speaker 8: and it is so important to be able to check
Speaker 8: in on a friend, a family member, a loved one.
Speaker 8: One of the things that SESME has focused on. Now,
Speaker 8: we just launched our Wellbeing Report in partnership with the
Speaker 8: Harris Poles so that we could start to examine this
Speaker 8: issue at skin Help. It's just astounding what we're seeing.
Speaker 8: One in three parents feel that mental health is negatively
Speaker 8: affecting their family, and it's over half of teens now.
Speaker 8: I think one of the things that I am hardened
Speaker 8: to see in some of our findings is that people
Speaker 8: are much more apt to ask for help now. These
Speaker 8: efforts towards destigmatization of mental health are really paying off,
Speaker 8: particularly with younger generations. Gen X millennials feel much more
Speaker 8: empowered to ask for help than previous generations.
Speaker 7: I mean, I think we also need to open me
Speaker 7: to interrupt you. I got excited.
Speaker 6: There's a great expression I heard which has really become
Speaker 6: a life motto for me, and it is never worry alone.
Speaker 6: Is life advice par excellence. This is wisdom enshrined in
Speaker 6: you know, sort of ancient traditions and modern psychological research.
Speaker 6: And I love thinking about you know, this this study
Speaker 6: at Harvard that I know all of you have heard
Speaker 6: about the Harvard Study for Adult Development that has looked
Speaker 6: at several generations of people in the Boston area to
Speaker 6: get a sense longitudinally like what contributes to a long
Speaker 6: and healthy and happy and successful life. And the one
Speaker 6: thing that comes screaming out of the data most clearly
Speaker 6: is the quality of your relationships. Because stress is generally
Speaker 6: what kills us, and quality relationships mitigate stress.
Speaker 7: So never worry alone. And this is true even for introverts.
Speaker 6: You may not need as much social interaction as an
Speaker 6: extrovert like me and perhaps Almo, but you still need it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think one of the most interesting things is even
Speaker 5: something like talking to a sales clerk or saying to
Speaker 5: a passer by, oh, what a cute dog.
Speaker 3: That we get a lift.
Speaker 5: Even from these like very minor exchanges with other people,
Speaker 5: which is another reason why being socially isolated is so
Speaker 5: bad for us. We're social creatures. We're meant to be
Speaker 5: feeling like we're part of a community, and so sometimes
Speaker 5: if you're feeling low and lonely, just walking outside and
Speaker 5: just having these little exchanges with just the people in
Speaker 5: your neighborhood, good thing that itself can be a small
Speaker 5: but meaningful step to take.
Speaker 6: It's just interesting, there's so much data. I've interviewed this
Speaker 6: woman on my podcast. I suspect some of you may
Speaker 6: have already talked to her, Barbara Frederickson, who's done all
Speaker 6: this work on micro interactions and how these as Gretchen
Speaker 6: was describing, talking to the barista or the sales clerk
Speaker 6: or somebody in the street with a cute dog, this
Speaker 6: is not trivial stuff. It adds up to real boosts
Speaker 6: and happiness.
Speaker 4: I was gonna say, I, you know, know, so much
Speaker 4: was written during the pandemic and kind of right after
Speaker 4: about how we lost so many of those micro interactions.
Speaker 4: Right like, so I was talking to the sales clerk,
Speaker 4: and I think we're still in a pattern of like
Speaker 4: re establishing that, which is difficult because so many people
Speaker 4: are continuing to work from home. And so I think
Speaker 4: we do have to kind of train that muscle again
Speaker 4: to kind of reconnect to those small ways we connected
Speaker 4: with other people.
Speaker 5: But you know, and I think one of the sort
Speaker 5: of dangerous things about loneliness is there is a tendency
Speaker 5: when we become lonely to withdraw. You would think that
Speaker 5: when someone becomes lonely, they would become more and more
Speaker 5: excited to like engage, But that doesn't always happen. Sometimes
Speaker 5: you know, you want to pull back. It feels more
Speaker 5: and more awkward. And as Joy was saying, kind of
Speaker 5: the whole COVID period kind of retrained us, and so
Speaker 5: it might feel more effortful to step out and have
Speaker 5: those little conversation or big conversations if you've sort of
Speaker 5: adjusted to not doing it or just connecting through social media.
Speaker 5: And so I think there's sort of a feeling that, well,
Speaker 5: if I'm lonely, of course I'll jump at the chance
Speaker 5: to go to a party or jump at the chance
Speaker 5: to go to a neighborhood barbecue. But maybe that's not
Speaker 5: how it will feel. Maybe it will feel really hard
Speaker 5: and you think, oh, you know, it's just not worth it.
Speaker 5: I'll just stay at home like I got plenty to do,
Speaker 5: and you lose touch with how energizing and important or
Speaker 5: just like our sense of vitality and well being, these
Speaker 5: big and small interactions are.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Nick Kepplie, who we've had on our podcast before, talks
Speaker 1: about that we have to get over this sort of
Speaker 1: speed bump of social connection.
Speaker 3: It's a perfect metaphor.
Speaker 1: Yes, friction, it's not too bad. It's like a little speed,
Speaker 1: but it can stop you.
Speaker 5: It can stop you totally, just having to get put
Speaker 5: on real clothes.
Speaker 1: So beauty of connecting over you know, like zoom or
Speaker 1: the kinds of things we're connecting over now is that
Speaker 1: you don't have to have real shoes. It's nice, but.
Speaker 9: That the joy, that's the joy, and that's it at
Speaker 9: the end. You know, Ella loves talking to out of you.
Speaker 9: But but there's times that tangoes walk. So Emma will
Speaker 9: be back soon, not Toitans of Happiness will be looked back.
Speaker 1: One of my own mental health challenges in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four is worrying about big global issues. The news seems
Speaker 1: especially relentless and grim these days. Many of us seem
Speaker 1: so divided over what actions to take. Sometimes it feels
Speaker 1: difficult to think about happier, nicer things closer to home.
Speaker 1: So I decided to ask my Titans of Happiness about
Speaker 1: this quandary, starting with doctor Joy Harden Bradford.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I will go back to intention to how
Speaker 4: much time you're spending on your screen, because it is
Speaker 4: very easy to fall down a rabbit hole of like
Speaker 4: watching traumatic video after traumatic video and you look up
Speaker 4: and it's been four hours and you feel awful, and
Speaker 4: so I think that it really is important to do that.
Speaker 4: I'm a huge fan of dance parties and hula hooping
Speaker 4: in the middle of my kitchen. Getting those endorphins going
Speaker 4: and physical activity is really really good, and so you know,
Speaker 4: I think people joke about, like, oh, go outside and
Speaker 4: touch grass, but being grounded and getting engaged in some
Speaker 4: physical activity can really help to manage some of the stress.
Speaker 4: And I think that that often feels minute in comparison
Speaker 4: to all of the tragedies and the stress that's happening
Speaker 4: in the world, but those little things do add up
Speaker 4: and can provide a buffer for some of the more,
Speaker 4: you know, difficult experiences we have.
Speaker 1: Gretchen any reactions to that much, well.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and just building what Joy said.
Speaker 5: I think that sometimes people feel like it's kind of
Speaker 5: selfish to worry about our own happiness or our own wellbeing,
Speaker 5: and we think, well, you know, in a world full
Speaker 5: of suffering and injustice, it's not appropriate for me morally
Speaker 5: to think about my own happiness. But what the research shows,
Speaker 5: and I think we all see this in our own
Speaker 5: lives is the people who work on being happier, calmer.
Speaker 5: They are the people that are most able to think
Speaker 5: about the problems of the world and to help out
Speaker 5: when their community or their family member, or their neighbor
Speaker 5: or their friend needs a hand. And so it you know,
Speaker 5: it isn't selfish to think about our own happiness because
Speaker 5: that's what helps us to turn out word to think
Speaker 5: about the problems of other people and the problems of
Speaker 5: the world. So you know, you're saying like, well, yeah,
Speaker 5: is me doing some hula hooping going to help the world,
Speaker 5: And you're like, you know what actually might because that
Speaker 5: moment of hula hooping or that dance party might be
Speaker 5: what you need to kind of give yourself the emotional
Speaker 5: wherewithal to really engage with the bigger problems of the world.
Speaker 5: You know, when we give more to ourselves, we can
Speaker 5: ask more from ourselves. But just like on the idea
Speaker 5: of like a simple hack like the hula hooping, I'm
Speaker 5: that big fan of scheduling time to worry. If you
Speaker 5: kind of have worry, that just kind of you know,
Speaker 5: just take over your whole calendar. If I just say like, Okay,
Speaker 5: I'm gonna worry about this from three to t three thirty,
Speaker 5: and I get out my pen and paper and I'm like,
Speaker 5: all day long, I'm like, I'm not gonna worry about
Speaker 5: this now because I've got my time to worry. And
Speaker 5: then because you know, often it's really there's a lot
Speaker 5: of good that can come from worry. But then it
Speaker 5: just stays contained and it stays constructive because I'm in
Speaker 5: a mental state to deal with it, and I've got
Speaker 5: my pen at my paper so i can write it
Speaker 5: to the list or follow up on things that I
Speaker 5: need to get done. So it's a much more constructive
Speaker 5: kind of worry than the kind of rumination or just
Speaker 5: sort of floating negative thoughts that are just kind of constantly,
Speaker 5: you know, flitting around my mind, distracting me and draining
Speaker 5: me all day long. So maybe it's once a day,
Speaker 5: maybe it's twice a day, maybe it's once a week.
Speaker 5: But I think that, as funny as it sounds, scheduling
Speaker 5: time to worry has really.
Speaker 1: Proved to be useful for me to love that. It
Speaker 1: seems like you also do it with a pen and
Speaker 1: paper in your hand, right, which might turn that worry
Speaker 1: into something more like expressive writing or journaling, Right, where
Speaker 1: you kind of go into problem solving mode as opposed
Speaker 1: to kind of ruminative loop mode where you just stay
Speaker 1: there forever.
Speaker 5: Exactly where you're just going over and over and over
Speaker 5: it without yeah, pinning it down or taking action.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and so Dan, when we think about stress, other
Speaker 1: ways we can hack our body. You know, Joy talked
Speaker 1: about kind of you know, movement and kind of dance
Speaker 1: parties and moving our body. I'm thinking of more like
Speaker 1: direct hacks to the fight or flight mechanism, anything that
Speaker 1: you've gotten from your meditation practices of how we can
Speaker 1: do this better.
Speaker 6: Well, just a plus one. I mean, I'm taking notes here.
Speaker 6: I love scheduling time for worry, and I am going
Speaker 6: to invest in a hula hoop and I.
Speaker 3: The next time we get together, we'll have a hula
Speaker 3: hoop content.
Speaker 6: And I also, you know, I just to totally agree
Speaker 6: with what you were saying, Gretchen about how this is
Speaker 6: not selfish. You really do want to take care of
Speaker 6: yourself because it makes you a better citizen, a better
Speaker 6: family member, a better contributor. Yes, But to answer the
Speaker 6: question you asked, Yeah, to me's what's been incredibly helpful
Speaker 6: to me in terms of burnout, and I'll be honest,
Speaker 6: I do tend toward burnout. I can be a workaholic.
Speaker 6: What's been incredibly helpful for me is self compassion. I
Speaker 6: suspect all of you are familiar with the work of
Speaker 6: doctor Kristin and her colleague, doctor Christopher Bermer. They actually
Speaker 6: have a book coming out soon on self compassion for Burnout,
Speaker 6: and I'll give you one a brief description of what
Speaker 6: self compassion is, and then one little practical exercise. You
Speaker 6: can think of self compassion really as the opposite of
Speaker 6: our habitual inner critic. Most of us talk to ourselves
Speaker 6: like a drill sergeant, and we think that's the best
Speaker 6: way to be effective. However, decades of research into self
Speaker 6: compassion has shown that if you can change your inner
Speaker 6: dialogue to a supportive coach, that makes you more effective,
Speaker 6: better able to reach your goals and establish habits, et cetera,
Speaker 6: et cetera. And so for me, as cheesy as I
Speaker 6: found this at first, it's been transformative. So here is
Speaker 6: what doctor Kristen Nef calls a self compassion break, and
Speaker 6: it's really three steps. The first thing to do is
Speaker 6: just to be mindful of what's happening right now, like, yeah,
Speaker 6: this is a moment that sucks. Step number one not
Speaker 6: hard to recognize that whatever you're dealing with right now,
Speaker 6: you are not alone. There are millions of other people
Speaker 6: on planet Earth feeling burnt out or depressed or lonely
Speaker 6: or whatever it is you're dealing with right now. This
Speaker 6: is a common human condition. Three is to direct some
Speaker 6: kindness towards yourself. And this is where for skeptics like
Speaker 6: me and anti sentimentalists like me, it can.
Speaker 7: Get a little weird.
Speaker 6: But there's a bunch of data to show that if
Speaker 6: you do two things simultaneously. One, talk to yourself the
Speaker 6: way you would talk to a good friend. So for me,
Speaker 6: it's like, dude, yes this sucks right now, and you've
Speaker 6: got support and you have a plan or whatever it is.
Speaker 6: I talk to myself the way I would talk to
Speaker 6: my son or a friend. And to supercharge that, put
Speaker 6: your hand on your heart, which I mean, I don't
Speaker 6: do this with anybody watching. But again, there's a lot
Speaker 6: of data to show that this can activate the mammalian
Speaker 6: care system. We're very good, many of us at taking
Speaker 6: care of our friends and family, not so good at
Speaker 6: taking care of ourselves. But you can channel that inner
Speaker 6: capacity for mentorship and direct it towards yourself, and to me,
Speaker 6: that's just incredibly good news.
Speaker 5: I just want to underscore something that Dan mentioned in Passing,
Speaker 5: which is that this is really good for people who
Speaker 5: are working on their habits, because a lot of times,
Speaker 5: when we're trying to be happier or more socially connected,
Speaker 5: we might be working on a habit that we think
Speaker 5: will help us achieve that aim. And just like Dan
Speaker 5: was saying, sometimes people think that they're really tough on
Speaker 5: themselves if they are that drill sergeant, that will sort
Speaker 5: of energize them to do a better job with their
Speaker 5: habits if they've kind of fallen off the path.
Speaker 3: But in fact, just as.
Speaker 5: Dan was saying, that people actually are more likely to
Speaker 5: re engage and sort of like try again if they
Speaker 5: say things to themselves like, well I learned that lesson
Speaker 5: the hard way, or I won't make that mistake again,
Speaker 5: or that wasn't my best day. You know what did
Speaker 5: I learn from how that went wrong? And so again
Speaker 5: that self compassion is so important and sort of however
Speaker 5: we might be coming down hard on ourselves it feels
Speaker 5: like it would be productive, but it really isn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I also love this idea of talking to yourself
Speaker 1: like you talked to friend, because I feel like that
Speaker 1: fights one of the criticisms I often get from my
Speaker 1: students about self compassion, which is that they confuse it
Speaker 1: with self indulgence. Right. They think that means like you're
Speaker 1: letting yourself off the book. Even your habits have been crappy,
Speaker 1: you're not going to kind of follow up with yourself.
Speaker 1: If you really think about how you talk to a friend,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't do that right if your friend was really
Speaker 1: messing up, you would be like, it's fine, like you
Speaker 1: do you, but you wouldn't scream at them like a
Speaker 1: drill sergeant either. You'd get like curious. You'd be like,
Speaker 1: I care about you, what's going on? How can I help?
Speaker 1: How can we problem solve? And it's kind of bringing
Speaker 1: that like compassionate curious problem solving, which is the thing
Speaker 1: we naturally do with our care system for friends. We
Speaker 1: just like rarely apply it to ourselves.
Speaker 6: And if you want to get granular about positive self talk,
Speaker 6: there's been some research done by Ethan Cross at the
Speaker 6: University of Michigan. He wrote a book called Chatter by
Speaker 6: the Way that's that's very good. And he has shown
Speaker 6: that if you use your own name when you're talking
Speaker 6: to yourself, it actually provides some distance that is helpful.
Speaker 6: So Gretchen X and Y reassuring notions, if you just
Speaker 6: put Gretchen before the reassuring notions, it can help. I
Speaker 6: often say dude or bro because I'm you know, like ridiculous.
Speaker 1: So now we're going to jump into something else that,
Speaker 1: at least for me, it becomes a problem with my
Speaker 1: own mental health. So I assume this is the kind
Speaker 1: of thing the world is facing as well, which is
Speaker 1: that it seems like it's harder and harder to just
Speaker 1: be present. I was talking with a friend the other
Speaker 1: day who was saying that she just feels like she's
Speaker 1: always in due mode, and it just feels really impossible,
Speaker 1: especially today, just to be in like being mode, where
Speaker 1: she's just kind of like existing in the world without
Speaker 1: that constant to do list in her head or kind
Speaker 1: of beating herself up, or just feeling like there's more
Speaker 1: and more to be done. Dan, I know this is
Speaker 1: something you talk about a lot on the podcast and
Speaker 1: in your work. Any suggestions for us.
Speaker 6: Okay, well, I'm kind of known as mister meditation now.
Speaker 6: But I really try to be very flexible and non
Speaker 6: dogmatic in my evangelizing for this practice, because I have
Speaker 6: a ton of sympathy for people who feel time starved.
Speaker 6: I feel that way myself, and so I don't want
Speaker 6: people to think that if they are interested in experimenting
Speaker 6: with meditation, that it's going to be some big stressful
Speaker 6: thing they need to add to their to do list.
Speaker 6: As we know, Gretchen really is the expert here in
Speaker 6: habit formation. But as we know, or at least as
Speaker 6: I think I know from the data around human behavior
Speaker 6: change and habit formation, one of the best ways to
Speaker 6: start is to start small. And so my little mantras
Speaker 6: or slogans on this score are one minute counts and
Speaker 6: daily ish. So what you want is to start inserting
Speaker 6: these little moments of mindfulness, of calm, of non doing,
Speaker 6: of just being into your day in a very gentle way.
Speaker 6: It's okay if you miss a week, it's okay if
Speaker 6: you miss a year. You can always start again. And interestingly,
Speaker 6: and we can talk a little bit more about the
Speaker 6: mechanics of meditation if you want, but I'm really focusing
Speaker 6: in this first answer on the habit formation part of it.
Speaker 7: I don't have time for it concern.
Speaker 6: I think actually that falling off the wagon is a
Speaker 6: real opportunity. I get people who tell me all the time,
Speaker 6: I can't be consistent with this, but those times when
Speaker 6: you are no longer meditating, that is an opportunity to
Speaker 6: notice the increasing toxicity in your mind and use that
Speaker 6: to fuel intrinsic motivation to go back to the practice.
Speaker 6: Because extrinsic motivation, a person like me wagging his finger
Speaker 6: at you is way less powerful than intrinsic motivation, and
Speaker 6: that can get you back on the cushion.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I really love this advice that it can be small,
Speaker 1: because I think for a lot of us, when we
Speaker 1: think about developing a meditation practice, it feels like we're
Speaker 1: like about to start running a marathon. Right, It's just
Speaker 1: another thing on my to do list. I got to
Speaker 1: do it twenty minutes every day. And that idea that
Speaker 1: like one minute is enough or even like just a
Speaker 1: deep beller breath, like a.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, dotty breasts. IMA's really good at those. Oh,
Speaker 2: can i'man do one?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: Yes, that's great. Do you want to try Amy's up together?
Speaker 2: Okay, first you put your hands on your belly like this,
Speaker 2: take a slow, deep brip in through your nose and
Speaker 2: a snow deep breath out through your mouth, and if
Speaker 2: you do that a couple of times, you'll feel really calm.
Speaker 3: Elmo.
Speaker 4: Do you ever feel sad or angry?
Speaker 8: Yes?
Speaker 2: Sometimes Emma doesn't love feeling angry or sad, though, you know, Emma,
Speaker 2: what does feeling to just go right around?
Speaker 1: So, Samantha, I know Sasame Workshop is putting together all
Speaker 1: kinds of resources to help people with their mental health
Speaker 1: and emotional wellbeing. Do you have any strategies you really recommend?
Speaker 8: Yeah, you know, we have a really easy three step strategy.
Speaker 8: We say, I notice, yep, Elmon notices I feel Elmo
Speaker 8: feels and I can't Ema. Can I notice means start
Speaker 8: to feel what's going on in your body? Are you
Speaker 8: getting butterflies in your stomach?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I feel name.
Speaker 8: That What is that butterflies feeling? Is it nervousness? Is
Speaker 8: it excitement? And then I can how to manage through
Speaker 8: that emotion. So we could do some belly breathing, just
Speaker 8: like Elmo taught us how to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what do you think?
Speaker 4: I think that that's such a cool idea and a
Speaker 4: great way, especially for young people to be able to
Speaker 4: practice this being grounded in the present moment. And I think,
Speaker 4: you know, when I think about like my childhood, I
Speaker 4: don't remember any lessons on like meditation and like slowing down.
Speaker 4: And so it's so cool that like my kids are
Speaker 4: talking about that in school, and like Sesame is doing
Speaker 4: this kind of thing, because I think, going back to
Speaker 4: our conversation about self compassion, like I think we get
Speaker 4: very critical that we can't do this thing that we
Speaker 4: know will help us, but so many of us have
Speaker 4: not been taught to do that, and so I think
Speaker 4: it really is a very tangible and like concrete way
Speaker 4: to give voice to this thing that often feels very abstract.
Speaker 1: So I know, Dan, you've done a lot of work
Speaker 1: teaching people to meditate, especially teaching folks who've never made
Speaker 1: it taked before, or maybe even are scared of meditation
Speaker 1: or cynical about meditation, to meditate. If somebody's listening to
Speaker 1: this on World Mental Health Day and wants to try
Speaker 1: out meditation for the first time, what's the first step?
Speaker 6: The skeptics, the time starve, the people who think this
Speaker 6: is not for me, those are my people. So I
Speaker 6: am not going to give you some long treatise on meditation.
Speaker 6: I'm just going to give you a very brief description
Speaker 6: on how one can do beginning mindfulness meditation. There are
Speaker 6: really only three steps. The first is to find a
Speaker 6: reasonably comfortable position in a reasonably quiet place, close your eyes.
Speaker 6: Second step is to bring your full attention to the
Speaker 6: feeling of your breath coming in and going out. You
Speaker 6: don't have to breathe in any special way, just feel
Speaker 6: the raw data of the physical sensations of your belly
Speaker 6: rising and falling, or the air entering and exiting your nose.
Speaker 6: Some people don't like feeling the breath. If that's you,
Speaker 6: you can just feel the sensations of your full body
Speaker 6: sitting in the chair, or you can focus on sounds
Speaker 6: in the environment. Really just picking something neutral, something sense based,
Speaker 6: to commit to for a couple of minutes or even
Speaker 6: just a minute. And then the third step is the
Speaker 6: most important for most of us. As soon as we
Speaker 6: try to do this seemingly easy thing of just like
Speaker 6: feeling the breath coming in and going out, or feeling
Speaker 6: what it's like to be sitting in a chair, the
Speaker 6: mind goes into mutiny. Mode, and you start like, you know,
Speaker 6: what's for lunch? Do I need a haircut? Where do
Speaker 6: gerbils run wild?
Speaker 7: Whatever?
Speaker 6: All these random thoughts start flitting through the mind. And
Speaker 6: this is the moment when most people believe they have
Speaker 6: failed at meditation. In fact, this is the moment that
Speaker 6: proves that you are succeeding. Because the whole game in
Speaker 6: meditation is not to achieve some sort of special state.
Speaker 6: As I often joke, clearing the mind is impossible unless
Speaker 6: you're enlightened or you've died. The whole goal in meditation
Speaker 6: is just to notice when you've become distracted and to
Speaker 6: start again, and again and again. And this beginning again
Speaker 6: is like a bicep curl for your brain. It shows
Speaker 6: up on the brain scans of people who meditate. And
Speaker 6: why it's important is every time you notice how wild
Speaker 6: your mind is, you get more familiar with the nature
Speaker 6: of your mind and therefore less owned by every random
Speaker 6: thought or urge or emotion that overtakes you. And so
Speaker 6: this is very simple, but not easy practice can have
Speaker 6: radical implications.
Speaker 7: I got Gretchen to meditate after years of trying.
Speaker 3: It doesn't work for me.
Speaker 5: It's not a tool that works for me, I had
Speaker 5: tried it a couple of times, and I tried it
Speaker 5: twice more because Dan is so persuasive, But I don't
Speaker 5: know tool fits every hand.
Speaker 7: That's true, that's true.
Speaker 1: But Gretchen, it strikes me that a lot of your
Speaker 1: sensory work is a form of meditation. Right Like when
Speaker 1: you talk about kind of walking around, kind of experiencing
Speaker 1: the world and smelling, that's kind of a mindful walk too.
Speaker 5: Okay, Well, here's the thing, and we may disagree, but Dan,
Speaker 5: to me, an essential part of meditation is to discipline
Speaker 5: the mind. You're asking your mind to try to do something.
Speaker 5: And when I'm doing it, I'm just roaming free. I'm
Speaker 5: letting my mind off the leachs. I'm just the dog
Speaker 5: following the smells through the forest. I'm not trying to
Speaker 5: do anything specific. And so to me, those two things
Speaker 5: feel very different.
Speaker 7: Wait. Wait, I got it. I gotta respond to that.
Speaker 5: I gotta Dan and I have gone over and back
Speaker 5: and back and forth because he wants to claim that
Speaker 5: everything is meditation, but there has to be something that
Speaker 5: is not.
Speaker 6: No, I don't feel also a mental I don't feel
Speaker 6: like everything's meditation. If you're sitting down and making the
Speaker 6: affirmative decision to plan lunch. That's not meditation, Like I
Speaker 6: get it. That's using thought, which is great, that's a
Speaker 6: beautiful thing. It's but it's not meditation.
Speaker 3: What about daydreaming? Is daydreaming meditation?
Speaker 5: Now I'm daydreaming and tuning into Central Park, and I'm
Speaker 5: just wandering in and out of my own thoughts, the sky,
Speaker 5: the leaves, my lunch, my calendar, the moss.
Speaker 3: Is that meditation?
Speaker 7: Okay?
Speaker 6: But see there's a conflation in there, the thoughts, the daydreaming,
Speaker 6: which I think is a beautiful thing. I'm not anti thought.
Speaker 6: I think daydreaming can be amazing. It's where a lot
Speaker 6: of creativity comes from. So, don't get me wrong. But
Speaker 6: what you're dropping in there are deliberate attempts to get
Speaker 6: in touch with your senses, the sights, the sounds, the smells.
Speaker 6: That is mindfulness, that is dropping below the level of discursive,
Speaker 6: often repetitive and negative thought and getting in touch with
Speaker 6: the raw data of your senses. To me, that is
Speaker 6: definitionally mindfulness. And so and I take a lot less
Speaker 6: militaristic view of meditation, where you know you're sitting in
Speaker 6: some special position, and some zen monk is smacking with
Speaker 6: you with a stick of metime you falls like that,
Speaker 6: That's not how I roll. And so just dipping below
Speaker 6: the level of thinking is a kind of meditation. And
Speaker 6: your walks through the park or your daily walks through
Speaker 6: the museums in New York City like that has meditation elements.
Speaker 6: You're just doing what works for you, and that is perfect.
Speaker 6: What works for you is always perfect, okay.
Speaker 1: All right, And both of those have the feature that
Speaker 1: I think we're trying to achieve with meditation, right, which
Speaker 1: is that we are kind of both non judgmentally noticing
Speaker 1: our thoughts and in an ideal world kind of practicing
Speaker 1: to control them, like practicing to kind of move them
Speaker 1: in a direction that feels a little bit healthier and
Speaker 1: like functionally, that's very consistent with a lot of therapeutic
Speaker 1: practices too, where you're kind of non judgmentally noticing your thoughts,
Speaker 1: maybe trying to move your thoughts in another direct and
Speaker 1: enjoy I see you nodding. This is kind of the
Speaker 1: type of thing you do in your practice. A bunch of.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, And I think you know, really, so much
Speaker 4: of it is about being present, right, And I love
Speaker 4: that you had this beautiful I think disagreement in some
Speaker 4: ways around like what is meditation and withs and that,
Speaker 4: because I think that that is a part of what
Speaker 4: has made mindfulness and meditation feel very in it accessible
Speaker 4: for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: This idea that it can only look one way when we.
Speaker 4: Are having a conversation, that lets us know that it
Speaker 4: can look lots of different ways, right, and so getting
Speaker 4: in touch with our senses doing a five minute breathing exercise,
Speaker 4: I can can look a lot of different ways. And
Speaker 4: so it really is a trial and error of finding
Speaker 4: the thing that works for you so that you can
Speaker 4: access it when you feel like.
Speaker 7: You need it. Doctor Joy for the when.
Speaker 1: Hey, Elmo, can you help us out with an ad break?
Speaker 2: Of course, Doctor Louie, but tell me a lot of
Speaker 2: break now, but don't go anywhere. That tell me is
Speaker 2: a hopless we'll be back soon.
Speaker 1: I sometimes ask myself a very simple question, when were
Speaker 1: you last living in the moment depressingly? My answer is
Speaker 1: often I can't remember. I'm usually so busy ruminating about
Speaker 1: the past or worrying about the future that I forget
Speaker 1: to enjoy the here and now, which isn't so great
Speaker 1: for my well being, But what can I do better?
Speaker 1: I decided to ask the Titans of Happiness. Gretchen Rubin
Speaker 1: jumped in first.
Speaker 5: I'm the kind of person that's constantly up in her
Speaker 5: head and I'm walking on the beach and I don't
Speaker 5: see or hear or smell anything because I'm just rewriting
Speaker 5: a paragraph in my head. So I have to make
Speaker 5: a very very deliberate effort to connect with my five senses.
Speaker 5: But I think this is something that we don't all
Speaker 5: have the same five senses, but this is something that's
Speaker 5: available to us at all times, and just stopping and
Speaker 5: saying like Wow, that's a beautiful smell, or that's an
Speaker 5: unusual smeller, Like oh wow, I'm in a hardware store.
Speaker 3: Hardware stores have that hardware store smell.
Speaker 5: Or I'm going to reach out and actually touch the
Speaker 5: bark of that tree or put my hand on that
Speaker 5: moss that looks so springy.
Speaker 3: Does it feel springy and damp? Is it actually dry?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 5: I'm going to touch it and feel it. There's something
Speaker 5: about connecting with our bodies that is so energizing and
Speaker 5: so revitalizing, and it's available to us at all times.
Speaker 5: For me, that is a really valuable way just to
Speaker 5: connect with them moment through our bodies, because you know,
Speaker 5: the thing with these with these experiences is we can't
Speaker 5: bookmark them, we can't save them for later, we can't
Speaker 5: even really binge them. Like I'm a person who loves
Speaker 5: the sense of smell. But one of the things about
Speaker 5: the sense of smell is even if I want to
Speaker 5: keep smelling that lilac bush, after a few seconds, I'm
Speaker 5: I'm gonna have other fatigue and I'm not gonna be
Speaker 5: able to smell it. So I have to enjoy it
Speaker 5: now and then let it go. And different people are
Speaker 5: more attuned to seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching. So whatever
Speaker 5: that is for you, thinking about like how you could
Speaker 5: really bring that into your life, or if there's something
Speaker 5: that you neglect, is there a way that you can
Speaker 5: bring that in, because that's probably where you have more
Speaker 5: low hanging fruit. I even have a quiz on my site,
Speaker 5: gretchenmuben dot com slash quiz where you can take a
Speaker 5: quiz to find out what's your most neglected sense and
Speaker 5: what's your most appreciated sense Because a lot of times
Speaker 5: we don't even know we don't even think about it.
Speaker 5: But it's something that's available to us us at all times,
Speaker 5: and it ties us to that present moment, and it
Speaker 5: just it just refreshes us, even if they're bad.
Speaker 3: That's the thing that's funny. Even I like even bad smells.
Speaker 1: I love this point so much because the last time
Speaker 1: we talked about senses, you had me kind of getting
Speaker 1: a little bit obsessed with thinking about different colors of
Speaker 1: different things. Oh yeah, and in fact, I wanted to
Speaker 1: see if we could have Elmo play a game where
Speaker 1: he notices some colors.
Speaker 2: Sure, everyone loves games.
Speaker 1: Okay, here it goes.
Speaker 5: Okay, So, Elma, what are some blue things you saw
Speaker 5: this week? What were some of your favorite blue things?
Speaker 2: Blue things? Let's see, Well, Cookie Master has blue fur.
Speaker 2: Almos him, Graver Glover has blue fur. Yes, I saw
Speaker 2: him and or Emma ate some blueberries for a snack.
Speaker 2: There's a blue and oh, Emma saw a really pretty
Speaker 2: blue sky on sesame streets.
Speaker 5: We'll just taking the time to notice those things makes
Speaker 5: you feel more connected.
Speaker 3: To the world and the people around you and the
Speaker 3: monsters around you too.
Speaker 2: Well, that's telling Emma all about.
Speaker 1: It, Gretcha, Thank you, Elmo, you're so good at noticing
Speaker 1: blue things.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Here, as we think about how we can use our senses,
Speaker 1: I feel like it's really powerful to be in your
Speaker 1: senses because it's yet another way to get away from
Speaker 1: your phones. But I know this is one that, like
Speaker 1: I struggle with so any other great strategies for kind
Speaker 1: of stepping away from your technology.
Speaker 3: I have a quick hack.
Speaker 5: Please, okay, if you are using your smartphone too much,
Speaker 5: go into your settings and change it to grayscale, which
Speaker 5: means that instead of being in full color, your phone
Speaker 5: will be in black, white, and gray. And it does
Speaker 5: two things. It makes it much harder to use. Just
Speaker 5: from a utilitarian it's just much harder to navigate. That's
Speaker 5: one of the reasons we see colors, because it helps us,
Speaker 5: you know, navigate the world. And it's also much less
Speaker 5: enticing because you know, if you're looking like on ads
Speaker 5: or even like photos of people you love, they're just
Speaker 5: they don't grab your attention in the same way. And
Speaker 5: so it's so much easier to step away from that
Speaker 5: phone because it's less appealing, and it's also tougher to use.
Speaker 5: And this takes one second, and you can change it
Speaker 5: back anytime you want if you like, get pictures of
Speaker 5: your baby niece, you can switch it back so you
Speaker 5: could see in full color and then turn it back
Speaker 5: to a gray scale. But so many people say that
Speaker 5: this is kind of up there with like not having
Speaker 5: your phone next to you when you go to sleep
Speaker 5: at night, you know, in terms of making it easier
Speaker 5: to step away from the phone.
Speaker 7: I'll add one.
Speaker 6: This is and Catherine Price, who wrote an excellent book
Speaker 6: called How to Break Up with Your Phone, and she
Speaker 6: asks people to just ask themselves a question on the
Speaker 6: regular when you feel your zombie arm moving out of
Speaker 6: your control to grab the phone, if you can remember,
Speaker 6: and it's going to be hard to remember, so if
Speaker 6: you can just remember, say ten percent of the time,
Speaker 6: to ask what do I need right now?
Speaker 7: Why am I doing this?
Speaker 6: And maybe you'll tune into the fact that you're bored
Speaker 6: or lonely or hungry or tired or whatever it is.
Speaker 6: And if you can catch that insert a little pause,
Speaker 6: you might then be able to make a better decision
Speaker 6: about how to use your time.
Speaker 1: I love this one. One of Catherine's other questions that
Speaker 1: I like a lot is what else, like what else
Speaker 1: could I be doing right now? Which is for me,
Speaker 1: has been this lovely way to kind of notice the
Speaker 1: opportunity cost of being on my phone right now, Like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm not talking to my husband at dinner, I'm not
Speaker 1: paying attention to what I'm eating. I'm not like looking
Speaker 1: out the world and noticing like all the cool things
Speaker 1: I could notice. That one's been super profound for me.
Speaker 3: I've heard of people who will put their e reading app.
Speaker 5: They'll like, if there's whatever their social platform is that
Speaker 5: they use the most, they'll replace it with their e
Speaker 5: reader and move the social platform deep into their phone.
Speaker 5: So when they have the zombie finger going out and
Speaker 5: hitting that app, the novel pops up, and you're like,
Speaker 5: you know what I'd really rather have.
Speaker 3: It's the opportunity cost.
Speaker 5: I would really rather spend this time reading that novel
Speaker 5: than scrolling through social media. And if I want to
Speaker 5: get to the social media, I'm gonna have to work
Speaker 5: harder to get there. And so maybe that's going to
Speaker 5: give me that pause to say, what else could.
Speaker 1: I be doing? Joanna, you mentioned kind of getting off
Speaker 1: your phone before. I'm curious that you had particular strategies
Speaker 1: that fit into.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I just want to call attention to how
Speaker 4: lively this conversation is and how many hecks we're having
Speaker 4: to develop to like break up with our phone and
Speaker 4: like break up with technology. And so I think that
Speaker 4: that is an important reminder for us that these platforms
Speaker 4: really are designed to keep us there, right, And so
Speaker 4: when you're struggling in that way, know that you are
Speaker 4: not alone because they are made that way by design.
Speaker 4: So yeah, So in addition to you know, all the
Speaker 4: incredible hecks that other people have shared, I've also heard
Speaker 4: of people kind of moving away from smartphones altogether. And
Speaker 4: so maybe they still have like a smartphone for like
Speaker 4: business hours, but in the rest of their day they
Speaker 4: use a phone that is just like for emergencies, right,
Speaker 4: And so really being able to kind of like put
Speaker 4: that phone away but still be reachable, I think can
Speaker 4: be another strategy if you find everything else just very
Speaker 4: very difficult.
Speaker 6: First, I totally agree with Joy. I mean this kind
Speaker 6: of goes back to self compassion. If you're beating yourself
Speaker 6: up for being addicted to your phone, recognizing that this
Speaker 6: is you against some of the most brilliant designers and
Speaker 6: most powerful supercomputers on earth.
Speaker 3: Who've been evolving this for decades now.
Speaker 6: Yes, the odds are stacked against you. It would just
Speaker 6: put in another plug for meditation in this regard, which
Speaker 6: is you know, mindfulness meditation you know, which is very
Speaker 6: closely linked to what a Gretchen was talking about before
Speaker 6: in terms of being in touch with your senses, can
Speaker 6: help you develop more self awareness so that you might notice, Oh,
Speaker 6: I'm on hour eight of scrolling through Twitter, and I'm
Speaker 6: starting to reply to people in all caps, So maybe
Speaker 6: I should put this phone down. The self awareness and interception,
Speaker 6: the body awareness that we can develop through mindfulness meditation
Speaker 6: can be a kind of Doppler radar. It can point
Speaker 6: out when a storm is coming, so that you're better
Speaker 6: equipped to do this very tough battle with the supercomputers.
Speaker 1: So that was the problem of kind of finding ways
Speaker 1: to be more present navigating the technology that's sort of
Speaker 1: pulling us away from being present most of the time.
Speaker 1: But I also think that to deal with the kind
Speaker 1: of mental health crisis that so many of us are
Speaker 1: facing right now, we need better strategies for being present
Speaker 1: even when the present moment isn't awesome. Right, we were
Speaker 1: just talking about moments of being present when you're missing
Speaker 1: out on the good things, and these beautiful colors of
Speaker 1: blue that you can see and all the great sensory
Speaker 1: information around you. But I think we also need to
Speaker 1: find ways to be present when the present moment is
Speaker 1: kind of not feeling so awesome what it's maybe feeling
Speaker 1: sort of yucky. So I'm curious your go to strategies
Speaker 1: for navigating negative emotions and maybe even finding ways to
Speaker 1: be present with them, Doctor Joy, any good strategies for that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I have really found that showers and baths help
Speaker 4: with that because I do think it is another opportunity
Speaker 4: to ground right and you are sensing, like Gretchen talked about,
Speaker 4: like the water around you, and I think especially for showers,
Speaker 4: there is a way that you can kind of visualize
Speaker 4: all of the negativity, all of the things that you're
Speaker 4: worrying about, just kind of going down the drain as
Speaker 4: you are standing there in the shower. And so again
Speaker 4: I think that that is something that feels very tangible,
Speaker 4: again for people who struggle with like what does this mean?
Speaker 4: And it feels very abstract, I think showers can be
Speaker 4: a really great way to manage some of those more
Speaker 4: difficult emotions.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, Yeah, I love this washing away because really it
Speaker 5: really does work. But one of the and I don't
Speaker 5: want to say this in a way that it's like
Speaker 5: every glass is half full and nothing is negative. You know,
Speaker 5: you just have to think your way to a positive side.
Speaker 5: I'm not saying that, but I will say that one
Speaker 5: of the things I work on is to see like
Speaker 5: negative emotions have value and they're important flashing signs that
Speaker 5: something needs to change or something's out of whack or
Speaker 5: out of value. And so when I'm feeling those emotions
Speaker 5: like I'm feeling envy, or I'm feeling regret, or I'm
Speaker 5: feeling boredom or anger or righteous indignation or just irritation,
Speaker 5: you know, I'm really I really try to step back
Speaker 5: and think like, Okay, well, what's what's the information here?
Speaker 5: Because for me, I often am just trying to sort
Speaker 5: of power through emotions and kind of move on to
Speaker 5: the next thing. And so for me, it really is like, Okay, well,
Speaker 5: I'm having this feeling of envy. What does this person
Speaker 5: have that I envy? Or out of nowhere, I seem
Speaker 5: to be overwhelmed with rage, why might DAD be Instead
Speaker 5: of just ignoring it or trying to be like dismissing it,
Speaker 5: saying like well, something set me off. There's information there,
Speaker 5: but as you say, it's very unpleasant. Like negative emotions
Speaker 5: are no fun, and to be overwhelmed with feelings of
Speaker 5: resentment or righteous indignation can be very very painful, but
Speaker 5: there is value in them. So I just try to
Speaker 5: stay with it, let myself experience it, because I'm a
Speaker 5: person who tends to try to just barrel through.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think, you know, one of the reasons
Speaker 1: I like using these emotions is information. I sometimes the
Speaker 1: analogy I use with my students is it's like the
Speaker 1: dashboard on your car, like the emergency dashboard, Like it's
Speaker 1: your engine light, your tire.
Speaker 3: Like yes, what a good that a floor?
Speaker 1: And I like that one because it's because, like I
Speaker 1: don't know about you, maybe you all deal with your
Speaker 1: cars very differently than I do. But like the engine
Speaker 1: light will go on and I'll be like, gotta deal
Speaker 1: with that at some point, not right now. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna pull over and like drive to you know, like
Speaker 1: the car mechanic, but like I got to schedule sometime
Speaker 1: on Tuesday to like go back to this and notice
Speaker 1: it and figure it out. And so I think sometimes
Speaker 1: when our negative emotions are there, there's like a time
Speaker 1: for kind of you know, putting them briefly to this
Speaker 1: side so that we can kind of but but you
Speaker 1: also have to schedule time to come back to them.
Speaker 1: I also think there's strategies we can use when we're
Speaker 1: in the thick of negative emotions to kind of allow
Speaker 1: them and sort of radically accept them. And Dan, I
Speaker 1: know this is some of the practices that you've talked
Speaker 1: about in the work that you've done with meditation, of
Speaker 1: like just things we can do to kind of be
Speaker 1: there with our emotions and sort of allow them. Any
Speaker 1: good strategies to share.
Speaker 6: With that, Yeah, well, I mean, as you know, I
Speaker 6: come out of a Buddhist context, so what I'm about
Speaker 6: to say might sound deeply counterintuitive or deeply unpleasant.
Speaker 7: Or radical in some way.
Speaker 6: So I'd be curious once I talk about it to
Speaker 6: see how it goes down with you. You know, everything
Speaker 6: in our culture strongly suggests to us that when we
Speaker 6: feel discomfort, we should self medicate in some way, shop,
Speaker 6: distract ourselves, drink, gamble, But actually that makes it worse
Speaker 6: and the move the real jiu jitsu move. In many situations,
Speaker 6: this is not always true. So for example, in trauma situations,
Speaker 6: I think you want to be a little bit more
Speaker 6: careful than what I'm about to describe. And maybe Joy
Speaker 6: can step in and give some more subtle instructions. But
Speaker 6: for let's just say the worried. Well, for most of us,
Speaker 6: you can dive into whatever you're feeling, not in a
Speaker 6: wallowing way, but in a curious way. So I'll give
Speaker 6: you a little slogan that I got from my meditation teacher,
Speaker 6: Joseph Goldstein, which is, it's okay. This does not mean
Speaker 6: everything's okay. It means it's okay to feel whatever I'm
Speaker 6: feeling right now. And in that process of okay, yeah,
Speaker 6: this is anger, let's see if we can use the
Speaker 6: microscope of our mind to disambiguate what's actually happening here.
Speaker 6: Is there buzzing in my chest or my ears turning red?
Speaker 6: Is there a starburst of self righteous thoughts? Picking apart
Speaker 6: what seems like a monolithic force of anger and seeing
Speaker 6: that actually it has constituent parts. It comes and goes
Speaker 6: as constantly in flux can help you move from being
Speaker 6: totally identified with your anger to recognizing that it's a
Speaker 6: passing storm, and once you allow it to come and go.
Speaker 6: Then you can respond wisely to the situation on the
Speaker 6: other side rather than reacting blindly.
Speaker 7: And to me, this is an incredibly powerful move.
Speaker 6: Of course, in some cases you really do want to
Speaker 6: be careful and specifically, I'm thinking about trauma, so I'll
Speaker 6: shout up and see if any of that lands for
Speaker 6: any of.
Speaker 1: You, Doctor Joyan. Does this kind of fit with some
Speaker 1: of the work that you do in clinical practice thinking
Speaker 1: about wise mind and some of those ideas, Absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 4: I think we often use the metaphor of like watching
Speaker 4: waves kind of go up and down and crashing, and
Speaker 4: like emotions are similar to that, right like you can
Speaker 4: see it rise to its peak with it eventually it
Speaker 4: does phase out. And so I do appreciate that caveat,
Speaker 4: and because especially with traumatic experiences, you do want to
Speaker 4: be careful not to dive right into the middle of
Speaker 4: that without having some support, because you can't be flooded
Speaker 4: and can make you feel more distressed than I think
Speaker 4: you would if you had some support. But to your point,
Speaker 4: like you know, the normal kind of everyday worries and concerns,
Speaker 4: being able to sit with your emotions as opposed to
Speaker 4: run away from it can actually be a very helpful activity.
Speaker 1: You know, if we look around the world at mental
Speaker 1: health reports, you know, one of the big things that's
Speaker 1: on the rise in terms of negative emotions is people's anxiety, right,
Speaker 1: And I think in some ways it's worth saying that
Speaker 1: that's formative. Right, there's lots of stuff in the world
Speaker 1: right now to be anxious about. But also anxiety doesn't
Speaker 1: really feel awesome, and sometimes in some cases it seems
Speaker 1: to be applied in cases where it's just fre floating
Speaker 1: or maybe not appropriate for the situation. Joy you're nodding,
Speaker 1: So I'm curious if you have some good strategies for
Speaker 1: this one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's just important to really normalize like
Speaker 4: how much anxiety everybody is.
Speaker 7: Feeling at the time.
Speaker 4: And you know, I honestly think we a part of
Speaker 4: what has been missed maybe in this conversation is thinking
Speaker 4: about the time in the history at which we find
Speaker 4: ourselves kind of post pandemic, if that is a thing,
Speaker 4: because I don't think that there has ever been like
Speaker 4: a slowing down and a stopping really to say, oh
Speaker 4: my gosh, what was this thing we all experienced together, right,
Speaker 4: Like we kind of just ran back into our offices
Speaker 4: and kind of like, you know, trying to assume life
Speaker 4: as normal when we are not who we were anymore.
Speaker 4: And so I think that that has led a lot
Speaker 4: of people to feeling very anxious on top of the
Speaker 4: anxiety they may have been feeling even before the pandemic happened,
Speaker 4: right And so I think it is important to kind
Speaker 4: of just give credence and give space to the idea
Speaker 4: that many of us are feeling very anxious about lots
Speaker 4: of different things right now, and that it is okay to.
Speaker 1: Kind of feel that anxiety that you might be experiencing.
Speaker 6: Just to pick up on what Joy was saying about
Speaker 6: the pandemic, you know, I don't think it takes a
Speaker 6: rocket science to figure out that one of the reasons
Speaker 6: why the pandemic dramatically boosted our anxiety is that we
Speaker 6: were or cut off from one another. It goes back
Speaker 6: to our discussion before about social connection and never worrying alone.
Speaker 6: For me, the maintenance and cultivation of relationships is what
Speaker 6: as a very anxious person, so who not only suffers
Speaker 6: from anxiety but also panic attacks, never worrying alone, cultivating
Speaker 6: and maintaining personal relationships is a huge, huge element for me.
Speaker 6: I would say there are two other things. I think
Speaker 6: one other source of anxiety for people is a sense
Speaker 6: of helplessness, especially when you look at the news and
Speaker 6: you look at what's happening in politics and climate and
Speaker 6: armed conflict. And there's an expression that I really love,
Speaker 6: which is action absorbs anxiety. Take action locally. You can
Speaker 6: volunteer locally. It doesn't even have to be relevant to
Speaker 6: the thing you're worried about. So if you're worried about
Speaker 6: the presidential election, you don't even have to volunteer on
Speaker 6: a campaign. You can volunteer at an animal shelter just
Speaker 6: doing so, just being helpful to your friends and family.
Speaker 6: I mean, think about the moment when you hold the
Speaker 6: door open for somebody, what does that feel like?
Speaker 7: It feels good? And we keep talking about do good
Speaker 7: feel good?
Speaker 6: That feeling is infinitely scalable, and I believe is an
Speaker 6: anti anxiety medication that is free and non addictive. And
Speaker 6: then the final thing I'll say about anxiety, and for
Speaker 6: me in particular, with somebody who really deals with a
Speaker 6: lot of not only garden variety anxiety but still panic attacks,
Speaker 6: is systematically getting yourself more comfortable with discomfort. I think
Speaker 6: one of the contributing factors to the modern uptick in
Speaker 6: anxiety is a pandemic to be a little cute of
Speaker 6: aversion to discomfort. We've created a world where everything is
Speaker 6: so easy, information, dates, food, it's all a swipe away,
Speaker 6: and so there's so much less friction in our lives,
Speaker 6: and that is contributing to a general unwillingness to tolerate discomfort.
Speaker 6: And so for me, for example, with claustrophobia, and I
Speaker 6: have some trouble with elevators, as Gretchen knows, she and
Speaker 6: I were at having dinner at a friend's apartment recently
Speaker 6: and I had to walk the stairs. But I've gotten
Speaker 6: very consistent at Okay, I know I'm afraid of elevators.
Speaker 6: I have claustrophobia. I take every opportunity I can to
Speaker 6: ride them when I'm feeling well enough to do so,
Speaker 6: or if I've got somebody I trust. And so this
Speaker 6: is called exposure therapy. And you can knit this into
Speaker 6: your life with whatever scares you, making little, carefully calibrated
Speaker 6: experiments to inoculate yourself against stress.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love this idea. Who was recently talking with
Speaker 1: a clinician at Yale about you know, what can we
Speaker 1: do to kind of promote mental health and young people.
Speaker 1: And one of the things she said was, I wish
Speaker 1: we could get all the young people today to engage
Speaker 1: in a little bit more distressed tolerance. Right, well intentioned
Speaker 1: parents who are trying to do great things of like
Speaker 1: help kids with their homework and help them kind of
Speaker 1: make things really easy in life and so on, it's
Speaker 1: meant that like they've just gotten out of practice when
Speaker 1: it comes to dealing with form of distress, even simple
Speaker 1: things like boredom. Right, we just kind of stick a
Speaker 1: screen in front of a kid who's feeling bored. And
Speaker 1: so I think kind of developing a personal practice where
Speaker 1: you engage a little bit more with those tiny negative emotions, right,
Speaker 1: like not taking on like some terrible traumatic situation, but
Speaker 1: just tiny negative moments that you can sort of endure.
Speaker 1: It sort of gives you practice so that when the
Speaker 1: big things come up, you feel like, Okay, I've readied
Speaker 1: my muscles. I've kind of like gone to the sort
Speaker 1: of distress tolerance gym a little bit. Just makes it
Speaker 1: easier later on when the big things come up.
Speaker 6: Funny little story, Laurie that my son who's nine came
Speaker 6: to me recently said he was bored, and I said, well,
Speaker 6: how does that feel in your body?
Speaker 7: And he said is.
Speaker 3: This a meditation thing?
Speaker 6: Because if it is, I don't want to hear it.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 5: One strategy that I find very helpful, and this is
Speaker 5: for more kind of low level anxiety, not the kind
Speaker 5: of serious anxiety Dan was just talking about, but maybe
Speaker 5: more kind of like the jumpiness, the jitteriness, the kind
Speaker 5: of uneasy feeling that sometimes can creep up on us.
Speaker 5: Is I find that just like physical exercise. Maybe it
Speaker 5: is the hula hoop, Maybe it's you know, walking up
Speaker 5: and down the stairs. Maybe it's going for and if
Speaker 5: I go for a walk outside and and then the sunshine,
Speaker 5: that's even better. If I'm walking outside in the sunshine
Speaker 5: talking to my neighbor and picking up trash, that's even better.
Speaker 5: But there's something about just like getting in the body
Speaker 5: and like using a little bit of energy that's helpful.
Speaker 5: And then also if we're exercising, it's easier to sleep
Speaker 5: at night. Then with more restless sleep, then we feel
Speaker 5: more energized the next day. A lot of times these
Speaker 5: things build on each other. You know, you don't sleep well,
Speaker 5: so then you feel that makes you feel more anxious too,
Speaker 5: just more and more in finding that exercises often the
Speaker 5: elixir for a lot of things. It makes a lot
Speaker 5: of things better, and it's just good for us in
Speaker 5: so many ways for mood.
Speaker 3: Immune function, memory focus.
Speaker 5: At least, I find in my own life that if
Speaker 5: I have that kind of jumpy anxiety where it's kind
Speaker 5: of racing running through my body and making it hard
Speaker 5: for me to sort of like feel calm, I find
Speaker 5: that I get a lot more calm when I go
Speaker 5: for a walk.
Speaker 1: And it's also just a way, you know, to kind
Speaker 1: of hack your sympathetic nervous system a little bit right,
Speaker 1: and like this idea of a little hermetic stress right
Speaker 1: where you're just kind of like getting your heart rate
Speaker 1: racing and kind of giving your body a little bit
Speaker 1: of a different kind of stress so that it learns,
Speaker 1: Oh wait, I can calm down.
Speaker 3: I don't do the racing heartbeat, got to confess, I'm
Speaker 3: doing more like the walk, the stroll. I'm doing the walk,
Speaker 3: the walking a dog, you know.
Speaker 5: But yes, but again, as coming back to what we
Speaker 5: were saying before, there are many ways to do this right.
Speaker 5: There's no one right way. It's whatever works for you.
Speaker 5: For some people, it might be going for a run,
Speaker 5: going for a bike ride. Another person it might be
Speaker 5: you know, ambling through a garden and the you know,
Speaker 5: in their neighborhood or something.
Speaker 3: So but whatever works, it's worth thinking about.
Speaker 1: So as we end this kind of conversation on World
Speaker 1: Mental Health Day, I'm just curious if you have any
Speaker 1: final advice for somebody feeling a little hopeless, like I
Speaker 1: really want to improve my mental health. What's your kind
Speaker 1: of one go to tip that you would kind of
Speaker 1: want to end with to help somebody improve their mental
Speaker 1: health on a day like today, Dretchen, do you want
Speaker 1: to start?
Speaker 5: I would say, take a walk outside in the sunshine,
Speaker 5: pet a dog, pick up some trash, talk to a neighbor.
Speaker 5: That's one thing that just about everybody can do pretty easily,
Speaker 5: even if they don't have a lot of time, energy,
Speaker 5: or money.
Speaker 7: Dan, this is less a hack and more of a
Speaker 7: piece of good news.
Speaker 6: I spent thirty years as a news anchor, and now
Speaker 6: my job is basically to spread one piece of news,
Speaker 6: which is extremely good news, which is that the science
Speaker 6: is showing us that happiness is not an unalterable factory setting.
Speaker 6: It's a skill that you can practice in many many ways,
Speaker 6: from meditation to getting out in nature, getting more sleep, exercise,
Speaker 6: social fitness as it's sometimes called, you know, boosting your
Speaker 6: ability to connect with other people. You don't have to
Speaker 6: boil the ocean and do them all at once, Just
Speaker 6: pick one or two that seem most attractive to you
Speaker 6: and start there. But again, the good news is you're
Speaker 6: the states of mind that you want are not, as
Speaker 6: I said before, unalterable factories setting their skills.
Speaker 1: Doctor Joy, either some good news about mental health or
Speaker 1: a final suggestion.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I will borrow from the late great
Speaker 4: mister Rogers who talked about always looking for the helpers,
Speaker 4: because I think when you are feeling hopeless, it is
Speaker 4: very easy to forget that there are so many people
Speaker 4: just all around you doing great things, and so looking
Speaker 4: at who's holding the door open for somebody, or who
Speaker 4: paid for somebody's coffee behind you, So looking for the
Speaker 4: helpers and also becoming a helper yourself. Like we've talked
Speaker 4: about in this conversation, doing good for others really can't
Speaker 4: go very far.
Speaker 1: Well. I want to end with a little bit of gratitude,
Speaker 1: which might be my tip, right, A kind of quick
Speaker 1: sense that things are good in life and there are
Speaker 1: some blessings out there. And I'm very grateful for the
Speaker 1: fact that all my titans of happiness showed up today.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Elmo and doctor Joy and Gretchen
Speaker 1: and Dan. This has been super fun.
Speaker 7: Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4: It was incredible.
Speaker 2: Dot As Sills, come on, let's a totin of happiness.
Speaker 1: Oh, Elmo, You'll always be my tight en of happiness.
Speaker 2: That's very kind. Doctor Lourie, Hello everybody, thanks for listening.
Speaker 2: Elma loves you.
Speaker 5: H