Speaker 1: Hi. This is Milan Vervier and this is Kim Azarelli.
Speaker 1: We are co authors of the book Fast Forward, How
Speaker 1: Women Can Achieve Power and Purpose. And you're listening to
Speaker 1: Seneca Women Conversations on Power and Purpose, brought to you
Speaker 1: by the Seneca Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Welcome to this special edition. During these difficult times, we're
Speaker 1: talking to experts who can help us gain perspective on
Speaker 1: the impact of coronavirus, as well as share tips and
Speaker 1: resources and so much needed inspiration. Today I'm joined by
Speaker 1: Emiliana Simon Thomas. Miliana is the science director of the
Speaker 1: Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley.
Speaker 1: She's the co instructor of the Science of Happiness course
Speaker 1: and helps run its exp Ending Gratitude Project. Ameliana, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for joining us. It's a pleasure. Thanks for
Speaker 1: inviting me to be on your show. Your topic of
Speaker 1: expertise is extremely important right now. Happiness. UM really going
Speaker 1: through a very difficult period in our history. UM, so
Speaker 1: very grateful for you joining the show. Ameliana. How do
Speaker 1: you define happiness and does it differ from person to
Speaker 1: person depending on I suppose their personality. Yeah, I'm so
Speaker 1: glad you asked that question, because that's one of the
Speaker 1: first mistakes that many people make when they think about happiness. UM.
Speaker 1: I define happiness as an overarching characteristic of one's life,
Speaker 1: and it is described as feeling good most of the time,
Speaker 1: being able to handle life setbacks, and a graceful and
Speaker 1: forward UM learning manner, and being well connected, feeling like
Speaker 1: you trust other people. UM. The mistake that people make
Speaker 1: is thinking that happiness means pleasure, or that happy its
Speaker 1: means cheerfulness or enthusiasm or gratifying a desire, when in
Speaker 1: fact those are positive emotional states. Positive emotional states matter,
Speaker 1: but they don't equal happiness. And if we strive for
Speaker 1: sea happiness by trying to string together a perpetual sequence
Speaker 1: of positive emotions, we actually feel less happy. I'm so
Speaker 1: glad you said that, because that is also what we
Speaker 1: sort of believe, is that happiness is not the sort
Speaker 1: of happy face emoji, but this sort of longer state
Speaker 1: of UM well being. And so I think you're right.
Speaker 1: I think everyone's chasing that happy face all the time,
Speaker 1: and it's not a very realistic, uh pursuit and actually
Speaker 1: leads on yeah yeah, and the quickly addressed the second
Speaker 1: part of your question. Absolutely, happiness feels different. Individuals who
Speaker 1: have a more shy or um nervous disposition or personality
Speaker 1: might experience happiness in a way that feels really different
Speaker 1: and been a very extroverted and in social social individual.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean that the benefits of being happy are
Speaker 1: any different. It just means that the expression and the
Speaker 1: behaviors and the particular activities that might be the best
Speaker 1: fit for fostering happiness might differ between individuals. So I'm
Speaker 1: going to ask the very obvious question, Um, how does
Speaker 1: a person stay quote unquote happy during very challenging times?
Speaker 1: What are you saying to people or what are you
Speaker 1: hearing that is helping people get through this difficult moment? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think one of the most valuable things
Speaker 1: in this in this particular time of the COVID nineteen pandemic,
Speaker 1: is to first develop some skills of managing stress and anxiety.
Speaker 1: Stress and anxiety are very, very natural and real, and
Speaker 1: the reason is because this time is particularly uncertain. The
Speaker 1: circumstances are ambiguous, We don't know the answers. Humans don't
Speaker 1: like ambiguity. The human nervous system is designed to try
Speaker 1: to find patterns and to predict what's coming and to
Speaker 1: be good at it, and just having a situation whether
Speaker 1: there is no possible answer that we can rely on,
Speaker 1: is inherently stressful, and because of that, the first thing
Speaker 1: we need to do is develop some skills for just
Speaker 1: finding some ease and balanced day in and day out,
Speaker 1: and for many that can come from practices that fall
Speaker 1: into the category of mindfulness. This maybe just a deep
Speaker 1: breath where you inhale deeply and exhale slowly, and put
Speaker 1: your hand on your heart and try to not think
Speaker 1: about the future or the past, or you're to do list,
Speaker 1: or the harm that you know is happening in the world.
Speaker 1: That instead just maybe the warm sun on your shoulders,
Speaker 1: maybe the delicious beverage that you enjoyed with your breakfast,
Speaker 1: just the things that bring you comfort and ease for
Speaker 1: even a moment, it can really benefit that pervasive stress
Speaker 1: and anxiety that we're handling or grappling with these days.
Speaker 1: After you've gotten that under your belt, really prioritizing moments
Speaker 1: of connection and connection where you feel like you're actually
Speaker 1: a source of support is a valuable way to um
Speaker 1: to manage time in a way that will be beneficial,
Speaker 1: that will fuel your sense of meaning and purpose. I
Speaker 1: think many of us are struggling, particularly those of us
Speaker 1: who are not on the front line, who are not
Speaker 1: considered essential, because we're not out there actually actively finding
Speaker 1: the vaccine or treating people who are suffering UM. There's
Speaker 1: a sense of guilt or shame around our inability to
Speaker 1: be of service, and we need to recognize that we
Speaker 1: are of service just by staying home. We are of
Speaker 1: service by reaching out to others who are alone, who
Speaker 1: are isolated. We are service by connecting with our friends
Speaker 1: in the ways that we still can despite the expectations
Speaker 1: for staying physically distant from one another. We are of
Speaker 1: service by just being present and aware and caring and
Speaker 1: caring about the issue and keeping ourselves praise of how
Speaker 1: we can be helpful outside of just trying to fix
Speaker 1: the problem or expecting ourselves to fix the problem. So
Speaker 1: important what you're saying, I mean, how we can each
Speaker 1: be of service and and it seems like in this
Speaker 1: time of being at home with our loved ones, probably
Speaker 1: being of service also means to really be thoughtful about
Speaker 1: your relationships and and be kind to the people in
Speaker 1: close proximity to you absolutely. I mean, if we have
Speaker 1: issues that we've been able to kind of put under
Speaker 1: the pillow because we are so busy in our regular
Speaker 1: lives that are now becoming more evident to us as
Speaker 1: we're spending time closer and longer with our families, it's
Speaker 1: a perfect time to set aside UH and the opportunities
Speaker 1: for real, heartfelt conversations and emotional sharing and spending time together.
Speaker 1: I think for parents who are home with school aged children, UM,
Speaker 1: this is a remarkable uh and yet strange opportunity to
Speaker 1: get to know each other in a different way than
Speaker 1: perhaps we were able to when our lives were busier
Speaker 1: and involved more time doing separate things out of the house.
Speaker 1: So relationship skills like expressing gratitude can be a really
Speaker 1: neat way to strengthen our bonds and UH convey our
Speaker 1: sense of commitment and interdependence with one another. Expressing gratitude
Speaker 1: can seem really easy and sort of flippant, but research
Speaker 1: shows that when we get good at it, and when
Speaker 1: we're specific about it, it can be a really powerful
Speaker 1: asset to our health and well being. And what I
Speaker 1: mean by specific is instead of just saying hey, thanks,
Speaker 1: thanks for in the dishes, or thanks for helping me
Speaker 1: carry the groceries inside the house. Um, we say something like, um, hey,
Speaker 1: thanks for doing the dishes. I mean, you could have
Speaker 1: done a bunch of other things instead, you could have
Speaker 1: watched TV or um taking a shower, but you helped me,
Speaker 1: and you're doing that allowed me to do, um, what
Speaker 1: I really wanted to do instead, which is have a
Speaker 1: phone call with my mother who I hadn't been able
Speaker 1: to talk to earlier today. So what I did was
Speaker 1: express what the person did, acknowledge their effort, and explain
Speaker 1: how it helped me. And it took us a few
Speaker 1: seconds longer. But those aspects of gratitude are really important
Speaker 1: to share, and when we share them, the gratitude has
Speaker 1: a much greater impact on a sort of sense of
Speaker 1: closeness and and shared bond. That's super powerful. Um, Like
Speaker 1: you said, being specific, that's a really great piece of advice.
Speaker 1: On the other side of the spectrum, where there are
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are home alone, and you know,
Speaker 1: dealing with socializolation is very difficult for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: What's your advice for people who are dealing with loneliness
Speaker 1: or even depression? Right now. Yeah, Loneliness and depression are
Speaker 1: a huge problem in this pandemic time. I can only
Speaker 1: encourage those of you who are by yourselves to use
Speaker 1: the tools that are available to you through technology to
Speaker 1: connect with people. UM. There are many many organizations who
Speaker 1: are providing live events, or people all join a called
Speaker 1: together on Zoom and talk about what is going on
Speaker 1: in their lives, get to know each other. I've participated
Speaker 1: in several of them, both as a expert perspective and
Speaker 1: also just as a member of the community. UM. There
Speaker 1: are lots of little ways to engage with people online
Speaker 1: through games and having some levity during these difficult times
Speaker 1: is of great value. Walking outside if you're able to,
Speaker 1: if you got the right protective equipment and your a
Speaker 1: location where that's acceptable, is a really powerful way to
Speaker 1: Even if you have to see someone at this six
Speaker 1: foot distance, it's still meaningful to see another human being
Speaker 1: and make eye contact, not or smile. Those little signals
Speaker 1: are really important. Having phone calls with people who you
Speaker 1: know and care about who also care about you is
Speaker 1: a really valuable way to remind yourself that you're still connected,
Speaker 1: remind yourself that you're still a human, that belongs to
Speaker 1: a particular community. These reminders are essential. Humans really suffer
Speaker 1: when put in a position where they're deprived of social
Speaker 1: contact and loneliness becomes the feeling we'll be back after
Speaker 1: this break. So what's the difference between moment terry happiness
Speaker 1: and this deep, lasting happiness that you're talking about, and
Speaker 1: what is the key to that? Yeah, I mean a
Speaker 1: momentary positive emotion, and I'm being really deliberate about using
Speaker 1: that word because I think it's a mistake to call
Speaker 1: that happiness. You might feel happy in a moment, and
Speaker 1: that is fine, but it's not very specific. We're actually
Speaker 1: equipped to experience this vast array of very particular emotions
Speaker 1: that we've been into the category of happy, that that
Speaker 1: feel good, and they can again be feeling of pride,
Speaker 1: a feeling of inspiration, the feeling of elevation, the feeling
Speaker 1: of amusement, a feeling of sheer pleasure, a feeling of anticipation,
Speaker 1: uh so many, a feeling of closeness and affection. All
Speaker 1: of these specific feelings are evolutions way of orienting us
Speaker 1: towards opportunities, towards meaningful opportunities, and they galvanize us too
Speaker 1: to furnish the response that makes that opportunity most available
Speaker 1: and most accessible to us, And so that response is
Speaker 1: pretty quick, like, oh, I have a an anticipatory sort
Speaker 1: of enjoyment sensation because of the smell of chocolate chip
Speaker 1: cookies baking. What that does is quickly make me want
Speaker 1: to walk towards the direction where that fragrance gets stronger.
Speaker 1: And then that's the end of that feeling. Right, that
Speaker 1: feelings over it served its purpose. If I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that feeling is so nice that I'm going to try
Speaker 1: to keep feeling it all day long, I would actually
Speaker 1: not be able to do that. Right. If I smell
Speaker 1: chocolate chip cookie for seventy two hours, I would soon
Speaker 1: not be able to smell it anymore, and or even
Speaker 1: find it quite aversive, right as you might. You know,
Speaker 1: think of people who work in occupations where they experience
Speaker 1: something that might be pleasurable once in a while or
Speaker 1: even regularly, but not all day long as sort of
Speaker 1: ordinary and normal. Are nervous systems habituate and adapt to
Speaker 1: stimulate that that are regular and readily available without any change.
Speaker 1: So because of that, our punts of emotions aren't meant
Speaker 1: to last and go on and be repeated over and
Speaker 1: over all day. Instead, they're meant to occur in births
Speaker 1: and to be dynamic and to come up and then recover,
Speaker 1: as it's the case with our negative emotions, and our
Speaker 1: negative emotions are as important as our positive emotions to
Speaker 1: our survival and our overall happiness in life. Oftentimes, the
Speaker 1: most meaningful experiences that we have involved negative emotions, those
Speaker 1: moments in life where we are moved to change something
Speaker 1: about who we are, or moved to take an action
Speaker 1: that might be particularly challenging or difficult. Those emotions and
Speaker 1: those actions are really important to our sense of meaning
Speaker 1: in life, to our sense of purpose, and those are
Speaker 1: both instrumental to what we're calling happiness, what I'd like
Speaker 1: to refer to its happiness in life. We have to
Speaker 1: be able to experience positive emotions. That we're the kind
Speaker 1: of person who can never feel joy when good things
Speaker 1: are happening, we're probably not going to end up in
Speaker 1: the category of a person who has high happiness in life.
Speaker 1: Same for someone who isn't able to recover from life
Speaker 1: difficult moments, who isn't skilled in the domain of resilience,
Speaker 1: they're also unlikely to fall into the category it's very
Speaker 1: happy in life. So there are these elements, are these
Speaker 1: components that really help us arrive at happiness. But it's
Speaker 1: not exclusively or even predictably just trying to feel positive
Speaker 1: emotions all the time. That actually doesn't work. In fact,
Speaker 1: those researches shows that when people try that, when that's
Speaker 1: their approach to striving for happiness, they're less happy. That
Speaker 1: expectation is impossible to fulfill. Yeah, like curse of high
Speaker 1: expectations is real. Um. Yeah, when we when we were
Speaker 1: doing the research for our book, we did see and
Speaker 1: and our experience is this that you know, having that
Speaker 1: sort of larger purpose um, and trying to find purpose
Speaker 1: across your life and and getting outside yourself kind of
Speaker 1: creates that halo of happiness um, that feeling that you're
Speaker 1: talking about, which unfortunately we're confusing with the word happiness.
Speaker 1: So I I really appreciate everything that you've said. And
Speaker 1: you actually now have a course um that helps people
Speaker 1: think about how to practice happiness. Yeah. So actually since
Speaker 1: two thousand and fourteen, we've been running a Science of
Speaker 1: Happiness course. It's some d X platform e d x
Speaker 1: dot org. You can just search for Science of Happiness.
Speaker 1: It's modeled after an undergraduate introductory level course, so there's
Speaker 1: eight modules of it. Each module has videos and readings
Speaker 1: and what we call happiness practices, and these are exercises
Speaker 1: that we've drawn from empirical studies that have shown that
Speaker 1: they have impact on happy net and people try them,
Speaker 1: and there's also exams and problem sets and the hope
Speaker 1: is and actually our own internal data has shown that
Speaker 1: when people complete the course, when people learn these ideas,
Speaker 1: invest in the practices and try them and exercise them,
Speaker 1: they actually grow. Their happiness goes up, their loneliness goes down,
Speaker 1: their stress goes down, their sense of meaning in life
Speaker 1: goes up, their sense of common humanity increases. This is
Speaker 1: all learnable. It's just a matter of putting in the
Speaker 1: time and and deciding that this is something that matters.
Speaker 1: Can you give us one example? I know it's a
Speaker 1: it's a whole course, but is there one example that
Speaker 1: we can take away from this conversation. Yeah, so the
Speaker 1: one that I shared earlier, the specific gratitude is a
Speaker 1: great example. Another example which is always fun and interesting
Speaker 1: to offer from from Berkeley being someone from Berkeley, California,
Speaker 1: because it's a common bumper sticker. It's called random acts
Speaker 1: of kindness. What random acts of kindness means is just
Speaker 1: the fighting on a given day or maybe for a
Speaker 1: sequence of three to five days, just perform three to
Speaker 1: five kind acts for somebody else. It can be holding
Speaker 1: the door open, It can be UM paying for their coffee.
Speaker 1: It can be calling them out of the blue and
Speaker 1: sharing UH an uplifting story, any number of things. Turns
Speaker 1: out that when people engage in this practice random acts
Speaker 1: of kindness and sort of shifts the tenor of your
Speaker 1: orientation towards other people, we think and think about and
Speaker 1: see other people in a more benevolent and friendly and
Speaker 1: trusting light. And it reduces stress and um strengthens bonds
Speaker 1: and increases our own happiness. So that's another example of
Speaker 1: activity that could be particularly beneficial in these times when
Speaker 1: we are grappling with the COVID nineteen pandemic. The more
Speaker 1: we preserve our sense of care and concern towards others,
Speaker 1: towards the world around us, and the more we act
Speaker 1: on that sense of care and concern, the better off
Speaker 1: we're going to be. What makes you optimistic or hopeful
Speaker 1: in this moment? For me, this moment is unprecedented in
Speaker 1: its in the degree of of global uh commonality that
Speaker 1: we're all witnessing. We have more in common with people
Speaker 1: around the world today than we've ever had in my
Speaker 1: life course, at least, we're all experiencing this remarkable event
Speaker 1: that will shift humanity in a way that that I
Speaker 1: can't really predict. But I think what we've learned through
Speaker 1: a hard lesson is that the less we cooperate, the
Speaker 1: less we coordinate our effort, the less we share resources
Speaker 1: and information, the more suffering and pain we are going
Speaker 1: to have to endure. And so I am optimistic that
Speaker 1: in the wake of this experience, our approach to many
Speaker 1: many different endeavors, from political to science to education, will
Speaker 1: be much more collective, will be able to understand and
Speaker 1: prioritize a more common approach to managing the challenges that
Speaker 1: we're facing, and maybe that will inspire to come together
Speaker 1: around other huge challenges that are on the on the
Speaker 1: road map for us, like climate change. I've douts what
Speaker 1: brings me optimism? Well, I have to thank you so
Speaker 1: much for this interview. I mean, you gave us such
Speaker 1: great advice from from the random acts of kindness and
Speaker 1: and sort of getting outside of yourself to create that
Speaker 1: halo of happiness to actually learning about ourselves through these
Speaker 1: difficult times. So we really appreciate your taking the time
Speaker 1: to be on the show and we hope to have
Speaker 1: you back. Thank you so much for including me, and
Speaker 1: thank you for doing the show, and onward onwards. Thank you.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Seneca Women Conversations on Power and Purpose
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