Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - Why Kindness is The Superpower You Didn't Know You Had with Claudia Hammond #312

Episode Date: November 16, 2022

When was the last time someone was kind to you – or you did something kind for someone else? I’m sure you won’t have to think back far to find a few examples. And that’s because the world is a much kinder place than we might think.   Today’s guest, Claudia Hammond, is an award-winning broadcaster, author, and psychology lecturer at the University of Sussex. In her latest book, The Keys to Kindness, she’s on a mission to encourage us to look out for the acts of kindness that are all around us.   In this conversation, she shares the results of the world’s largest in-depth study on kindness, and highlights the wide range of mental and physical health benefits for both giver and receiver. We talk about what kindness and compassion really mean, and the huge range of ways we can make a difference. We discuss the fears and obstacles that prevent people from being kind, how to overcome them, and why we should practice more kindness in relationships, as well as in the workplace. Among many other topics, we also look at unkindness on social media, why empathy is a skill you can learn, and how being kind to others starts with being kind to yourself.   I sometimes think kindness has a PR problem. It’s something we see as a bit throwaway, undervaluing it at best, dismissing it as ‘soft’ at worst. But by bringing us the psychology and neuroscience on why kindness matters, Claudia provides a powerful call to action to notice and create more of it in daily life. I hope this conversation inspires you to rise to the challenge. Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore or https://fblm.supercast.com. Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/312 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

Kindness does so many things for us and there's loads of evidence that receiving an act of kindness improves your well-being and then there's even more evidence that it improves the well-being of the person who is the giver if you like, that it makes them feel good too. It will even get you the things you want, it will improve relationships, it will improve mental health, so why not do it? Before we get started, just wanted to let you know that my latest book, Happy Minds, Happy Life, 10 Simple Ways to Feel Great Every Day, is available to buy all over the world in the UK, America, Canada, Australia, India, to name just a few countries. It's available as a

paperback, ebook, and as an audio book, which I am narrating. And if you enjoy my weekly podcast, I really think you're going to enjoy this book. Feedback has been truly wonderful. Do pick up your own copy if you have not done so yet. And if you enjoyed the book, as we approach the festive season, why not consider gifting it to someone in your life? Now, on to this week's episode. When was the last time that someone was kind to you? Or you did something kind for someone else? Well, I'm sure you won't have to think back too far to find a few examples. And that's because the world is a much kinder place than we might think. Today's guest, Claudia Hammond, is an award-winning broadcaster and psychology lecturer at the University of Sussex.

She has just published her latest book, The Keys to Kindness, and in it, she's on a mission to elevate kindness in the world around us. In our conversation, she shares the results of the world's largest in-depth study on kindness and highlights the wide range of mental and physical health benefits for both giver and receiver. Yes, that's right. Kindness is good for your physical health and your mental wellbeing. We talk about what kindness and compassion really mean, the wide variety of ways

in which we can all make a difference, the fears and obstacles that prevent people from being kind, and why we should intentionally practice more kindness in our relationships as well as in the workplace. We of course look at the particular brand of unkindness that we commonly see on social media, the benefits of social media for net levels of kindness in the world, why empathy is a skill you can learn, and how being kind to others starts with being kind to yourself. Now when you really examine the incredible benefits of kindness for us as individuals, but also across society as a whole, I honestly think that kindness has a bit of a PR problem.

I honestly think that kindness has a bit of a PR problem. It's something we see as a bit throwaway, undervaluing it at best, dismissing it as soft at worst. But by bringing us the psychology and neuroscience of why kindness matters, Claudia provides a powerful call to action to notice and create more of it in our daily lives. I hope this conversation inspires you to rise to the challenge. And now, my conversation with Claudia Hammond. I think one of the central cases you make is that we need to recognise, appreciate and value kindness more. Why is that? Well, I think we need to notice that it is going on because kindness is at the heart of human relationships. And kindness is what helps us to get on, which helps us to sort out problems.

And if you look around the world, you know, there are an enormous number of problems, and there's a lot to be sorted out. And that's all about people listening to each other and all about people understanding each other and communicating. And really, if you think about it, that is what kindness is. That is what kindness means. It is at the heart of our relationships. And so I'm saying that there is more kindness in the world than we might think.

You know, you watch the news and you see terrible, terrible things happening. And, of course, that is what has to be on the news. You have to have the negative things on the news because it doesn't matter that, you know, 20 people weren't murdered in Luton last night, but if 20 people were murdered, we need to know that. So you're not going to just have on the news

saying that people were nice to each other because that's not the thing we urgently need to know about. And, of course, that can then give us the impression that most things are bad, whereas there is a load of kindness going on. So the first thing I want people to do is to recognize that kindness, to almost become a kindness twitcher and to look out for it and to see that it is going on. Tiny acts of kindness that you see all the time. You know, on my way on the train here at the station, there was somebody selling poppies. I bought a poppy. Lots of people were buying poppies. That was all an act of kindness that they were doing,

donating some money to some people who were really benefit from that. Somebody started chatting to me on the train and somebody, and she then went to the, she then went to the buffet with somebody else and said, do you want, you know, do you, shall I get you something while I'm there? You know, that was acts of kindness as well. And they are there all the time if you look for them. How did that make you feel on the train? You know, that was acts of kindness as well. And they are there all the time if you look for them. How did that make you feel on the train? Number one, when you bought a poppy. And number two, when someone offered to get you something when they were going to buy some food.

It makes you feel really good. And there's loads of evidence that receiving an act of kindness improves your well-being. And then there's even more evidence that it improves the well-being of the person who is the giver, if you like, that it makes them feel good too. And so as the person, you know, buying the poppy, yeah, I did feel good after that. I thought, oh, I've done a, you know, I've done a good thing there. And that was a nice thing to do. At the start of chapter two in your book, you wrote something that really caught my attention. Behaving compassionately improves the lives of others. It also improves our own lives.

There are measurable boosts to health, both mental and physical. Behaving kindly can act as a buffer against burnout and stress and improve our wellbeing. It brings us happiness. It can even help us to live longer. That's a pretty good sell for kindness, isn't it?

Yeah, it really is. You know, kindness does so many things for us that why not do more of it in a way? Because there is good evidence about all these things. So there's lots of experiments, say, where they stop people in the street in the morning and they give them, this is done in Canada, they give them $5 or $20. And then half the people are told, spend it on yourself sometime today and meet us again at five o'clock. The other half of the people are told, spend this on someone else. You could give it to charity. You could buy

something for somebody and meet us again at five o'clock. And when they meet them at five o'clock, they then give the mood questionnaires. And the people who did something for someone else are in a better mood. Their wellbeing is higher than the people who did something for someone else are in a better mood. Their wellbeing is higher than the people who did something for themselves, even though they got a free thing, you know, they got a present from this study, which is nice, but yet doing it for someone else is even better. This morning, in preparation for you coming to the studio, I went to a local coffee shop. I dropped my daughter at school. I went there, thought I'm going to read a bit more of the book in different environments. And although I wasn't reading something directly related to this, you actually,

the moment where I thought of this was when you spoke about this lady called Pinky, who does these five acts of kindness each day. We'll talk about that shortly. But I was about to buy my wife a takeaway coffee to come home and give it to her. I thought, you know what? I'm just going to pay it forward. So as I went to get it and pay for it, I just said to the barista, can I also pay for coffee for the next person who comes in? She said, yeah, sure. So I did that. There was no one else in the coffee shop. And then I saw someone entering. So personally, I thought, you know what?

I don't want to be here. Yeah, yeah. When she has that interaction and she goes, oh, that was that gentleman. I thought, no, no, no. Yeah, it was slightly embarrassing. Well, yeah. And I guess for me, I've been thinking about that. I felt great afterwards.

It felt really nice that it was an anonymous act of kindness. And so I was going to ask you, does it matter whether I was there or not, or the fact that this was anonymous? You know, how does that impact the potential benefits? Yeah, so both will improve your well-being. My well-being. Your well-being. Yeah, both will make you feel good, the fact that you did that thing. My wellbeing. Your wellbeing, yeah. Both will make you feel good, the fact that you did that thing.

And it's interesting if you look at things like donation pages for charities on websites. You know, some people will do it anonymously. Some people will do it and leave their name. And there has been a study finding that if some people in a row have left more, then the next person leaves more. And particularly that men are likely to leave more particularly if it's

an attractive woman who's raising the money, and another man then leave some, they then slightly compete and leave a bit more. And this all helps raise more money. What does that tell you about human nature? Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So there can be some sort of showing off about it. And in a way, that's how things like charity auctions work. You know, charity auctions, the idea is that people in the room who can afford it, show off the thing they want to buy at the auction and out-compete each other. And they get to, you know, feel good and show that they've, if they want to, show how successful they are. But the charity gets even more money from it. So in the end, it benefits those recipients for that.

So in a way, I think it doesn't matter. recipients for that. So in a way, I think it doesn't matter. It's not worse that it's not anonymous and that we shouldn't question our motives too much. If it gets people to do kind things, then it's okay to feel good about it. And it's okay to, as long as it is authentic, then it is okay to even do it thinking, yeah, this will make me feel good. It'll make them feel good. It'll be all good. I think in a way, we shouldn't get too sort of precious about motives. As you are describing that, Claudia, the case of well-known public figures or celebrities who donate to charity comes up for me, because these things are often, they're often met with a lot of skepticism. Oh, this famous person who's a multimillionaire gave £10,000 to this charity, for example. And,

you know, whenever these things happen, I haven't seen it recently, but, you know, from recollection when these things happen, there's a whole manner of different comments. Some people go, that's great. Other people will go, that should have been done anonymously. You're just trying to make a good name for yourself. Like, I don't know, why is there such scepticism, do you think, when, I guess, well-known people, famous people make these big donations? Yeah, and it's known as tainted altruism. And so the idea is that their altruism is somehow tainted by the fact that they're famous. And then some people will say, well, they could have done it anonymously. Now, they could do it anonymously, but they can bring a charity huge amounts of publicity

because of their famous name. So yes, it might make them look good as well. So I think it's slightly harsh when people criticise them because people might say, oh, well, they could have given them 20 million. Well, they could have done, but at least they gave them 10,000. And plenty of people aren't giving away their 10,000 at all.

So why do we dislike them more than the one who didn't give 10,000? And we sort of think that, oh, they think they've got something to gain by that. But have they really got that much to gain? You know, they've already got, they're already very well known for their thing. But also, let's say they did give 10,000 to one charity. How do we know that they have anonymously not given 50 or 100 k to another one you know it's kind of yeah well and this kind of assumption that we know it's this I mean you write this there is a chapter in the book on social media we're definitely going to get to

that but this whole idea that you know just what you are fed on social media is the totality of someone's life yeah that's also a little bit toxic as well. It's like, well, that's just one component that someone has chosen to share. Yeah, yeah, exactly. They could easily be doing other things. And I'm sure many of them are. And sometimes you do hear stories where you hear about a celebrity who did something very anonymously. You know, they disguised themselves and went to work at a homeless shelter or whatever it was. Why did you write a book on kindness? I had the idea actually during the first lockdown in the pandemic

because I noticed so many acts of kindness going on. And, you know, so many streets like mine and many, many others, you know, all set up mutual aid WhatsApp groups. And people were just being so lovely to each other. And I just thought, this is so amazing, the kindness that is being used to help us all get through this. And I wanted to know more about it started looking all into the research and there is there's so much interesting

research from psychology and neuroscience as well on on kindness and uh and i thought well let's look at let's look at that research and see what what are the benefits and how can we go about having more of it and being a bit kinder and it's and it's not i wouldn't say you know i'm not some amazing saint myself i think kindness can sometimes be really difficult to do. And sometimes in situations it's complicated to know how best to be kind and what would be the kind thing to do. But I thought, well, it's worth looking at that and trying to be kinder. As I think about kindness, kindness is something we've spoken about on this podcast before. It's something I'm incredibly passionate about. Now, one of the things I would say with kindness is that I think if you ask people on the street, you know, do you want to be kind? They'll probably

say, yeah, you know, I think we all know it's good to be kind. What I think is powerful about the research you've put together is that it goes beyond just, you know, it feels good. It's the right thing to do. As you say, there's a lot of research, psychology, neuroscience, and we've already mentioned, you know, protective against stress and burnout, right? Can help us live longer. You know, I wonder if there's a PR problem with kindness. And what brings this to mind is last night over dinner, you met my son this morning, but my daughter, who's at school at the moment, was saying, oh, daddy, you're doing a podcast tomorrow. Who are you talking to? I said, oh, Claudia Hammond. She says, oh, you've had her before, haven't you? I said, yeah.

What are you talking about? I said, kindness. She goes, oh, I get it, daddy. You know, be kind, be kind. Yeah, I know. And it made me think, right? So they're obviously hearing that at school, that it's important to be kind. And I hope throughout this conversation, we're going to get to these kind of robust pieces of research to show it's not just about it's the nice and right thing to do.

It's much more than that. Yeah, it definitely is and i think yeah i think you're absolutely right kindness does have a sort of pr problem it's seen as something that's a bit soft and a bit weak and kind of oh well it would be nice to have that and yeah it's all very well but it's all a little bit flaky and that's just not true and i know and so so i am quite sort of muscular in my views about kindness if you like that i think you know we need it it's okay to say that it's a good thing and that it will benefit us as well as other people and to find ways of doing more of it and of being kind more often, which will be very different ways

for different people. It's not that everybody must go and volunteer or that everybody must, you know, climb Mount Kilimanjaro and raise loads in sponsorship. I mean, you know, don't let me stop you if you want to do that. That's absolutely great. But it can be in really small ways as well. And what I want people to know is that even those really small ways can really make a difference to people. So just chatting to someone in the shop who happens to be in the queue next to you, that could be the only person they chat to all day. That could be the conversation that really makes them feel a little bit better that day because it was their only human contact and they were feeling lonely. You don't know the impact that really small things that you do can have. And there's really

interesting research on talking to strangers. And lots of this has been done by Gillian Sandstrom, who's a colleague of mine at Sussex University. And she has found that people are often nervous about talking to strangers because they're afraid the stranger won't like it, the other person won't like it, and that they're going to bore them and that the other person would wish they weren't speaking to them. And then when she does experiments where she gets people deliberately, she tells them, you must go and talk to, you know, five different people today and then ask both sides whether they like it. Actually, it turns out they nearly all like it and that most people do like it

and that they don't judge us badly. So most people are afraid they'll be judged badly by the other person. And it's just not true at all. You know, it just isn't. And it's just so nice. You know, I was in the supermarket the other day and we were having a party.

And so we were just buying doughnuts to create a doughnut mountain cake. And the woman behind me said, oh, we were having a party. And so we were just buying doughnuts to create a doughnut mountain cake. And the woman behind me said, oh, you're having a party. And then we ended up having a chat all about that and what I was going to do with the doughnuts and things. And it's just, well, isn't that nice? You know, that's just a nice thing. So even just talking to a stranger, I would count as an act of kindness. Now, obviously, if you stay and, you know, bore on for ages and tell them your life story and they didn't want you to, then that's a bit different. But and you can have I've had really profound interactions with with strangers. There was one time I was on a plane. And I was

reading a book about transhumanism about people trying to find ways of them living on after their body has died, you know, can they download their brain to a computer or cryogenics? And, you know, all things that don't, there is no way of those working at the moment, but interesting. Interesting that people are going to such effort to try and what they think that will be like later. And the woman next to me, I think she was Norwegian, she asked me, what's transhumanism mean? And I explained it.

And we ended up for the rest of the flight talking about what we thought might happen to our bodies when we die and what we thought might happen after death. So a very profound personal conversation in a way. And we carried on while we queued for passports. We carried on while we waited for our bags. And then it seems slightly strange sort of saying goodbye because then our respective friends came to meet us and it was kind of, we're lovely talking to you anyway. Bye.

And it was sort of odd in a way. But that all came from her asking me that one thing about what you're reading I love stuff like that and I guess in some ways the fact that there was going to be a finite end point maybe in some way contributed to actually going that deep that quickly yeah you know I can say anything yeah yeah I can be really honest yeah so it probably allowed that deepness which you may not have have got with someone you knew potentially. Yeah. Yeah. What is kindness exactly? So there are arguments about sort of how to define it, you know, academically and how it crosses over with compassion and how it crosses over with empathy. And obviously they all share things in common. I define it and so do some others as

kindness is something that you do with the aim of benefiting someone else. Now I say the aim there because sometimes it can go wrong. You know, sometimes you do try and offer help and maybe somebody doesn't want it or maybe somebody feels patronised by what you've offered or you've tried to give somebody something and they say, you know, I don't want your charity type thing. You know, it can occasionally go wrong. But so that's why I say with the aim of benefiting someone else. But it can be a really wide range of things. So it hasn't got to be, you might think of helping someone,

you know, picking something up for them that they've dropped or showing people the way and things like that or giving people a present. But it can also be forgiving someone who's said something, done something to upset you. It can mean spotting that somebody is left out of a conversation and, and, um, or left out generally of something social and, and bringing them in or, um, you know, just noticing that somebody's unhappy or really listening, truly listening to somebody who is trying to tell you something important all the way to volunteering or, you know, doing amazing things or heroism.

In a way, it's everything from cups of tea to heroic acts that save lives and, you know, everything in between. But those small things really do matter as well. You know, people taking each other cups of tea every morning really does make a difference and matter and really strengthens relationships. Tell me about Pinky. Yeah, so Pinky Lilani is somebody who's very, she's very interested in kindness herself. And she takes around with her every day five beautifully wrapped individual chocolates.

And she chooses who to give them to. So she just gives them to people she meets in shops. She's someone who chats to strangers a lot. And she just gives them a way to people to brighten up their day slightly. What benefits do you think there are to her, but also to the people she's been kind to? Yeah, it's interesting.

So actually, loads more research has been done on the benefits to the person giving the kindness rather than the recipient. And I think possibly because people think, oh, well, it's obvious that it's good for recipients. But then there have been studies that have looked at both. So there was an interesting study that I like that was done at the Coca-Cola offices in Madrid. But it was done by psychologists at a university in California. Interesting that they did it in Madrid. They

don't explain why, but that's papers for you. But they got a set of people and some of them were told that they were going to be the givers of kindness and that they gave them a list of 10 other colleagues who didn't know they were going to do this. And they had to plan over the next four weeks to pick a day each week and to carry out five kind acts at work to that list of 10 people over the time. And then the others didn't know this was what was going on. They knew they were in a study and they filled in various things about their mood. And they found that at the end of the month of this happening, both groups, their well-being had significantly increased. So both the givers and the receivers of these acts of kindness were benefiting from it but a month on after that it

had worn off for the recipients these nice things they were receiving at work the joy of that but it hadn't worn off for the givers possibly because it became a habit and they carried on giving you know we don't know that they didn't look at that but i want i wonder slightly if that might be what it was that they carried on but there's also research showing that even recalling a kind act kind thing you did for someone else makes you feel better at that moment and can even make it in one study from China that you can you can lift heavier weights if you just thought about something kind you've done for someone yeah I wrote that study down and what I was going to talk to you about that. I mean, that was just extraordinary. It's incredible. Because again, I think it takes it away from, oh, be kind, you know, it's the nice thing to do, which of course,

I think is a valid enough reason to practice compassion and be kind. But it shows some really quite profound physical and mental well-being benefits, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. And I think partly it is about the words you use as well, because as you were saying, you know, your daughter said, oh, yeah, be kind, whatever. And it's true, there's, you know, a hashtag, be kind, on social media sometimes gets weaponized and it's used to shut people down and people say, be kind. And it's interesting that in the workplace research, for example, in organizational psychology,

they tend to refer to it as there's a field called ethical leadership rather than kind it's almost and there is kindness that they're talking about you can tell and this but it sounds cooler doesn't it oh i'm going to be an ethical leader rather than a kind leader and i think there is this fear that it sounds a bit wishy-washy to be a kind leader you can imagine that ceo saying hey guys i'm not here today i'm going to an ethical leadership conference. Exactly. Yeah. Whereas if they said they were going to the kind leadership conference, they would go, yeah, remember what you did to us last week. But it speaks to that PR problem again, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's just fascinating. I was thinking,

like earlier on, you said there's more, there's already a lot of kindness in the world, but you want us just to maybe get some more out there. And this morning I was thinking, why is it then that many of us feel that there isn't? Many of us probably, I don't know, we'll talk about the kindness test that you've done. But I was thinking a little bit, Claudia, I don't know your view on this. I was thinking, well, But I was thinking a little bit, Claudia, I don't know your view on this. I was thinking, well, people these days, there's a lot of stress. There's a lot of burnout. A lot of people feel very time pressured. And so if I think about the physiology of the stress response, when we're feeling stressed, like everything closes in, right? We're just trying to focus,

we're trying to get through, you know, even our vision narrows, everything comes inwards. And so kindness at that moment is not really a priority. Whereas, I don't know, let's say someone's not working on a Sunday and they have a nice Sunday lunch with their family and they've got no work pressure and they're chilled out. So the stress system is right down. And because they're in parasympathetic like maybe maybe kindness is much easier to practice in that moment yeah what do you think to that yeah no i think that's definitely the case and i think one thing that's worth thinking if if somebody's really annoyed you one thing that's and you're feeling very irritated and stressed by this and it can

you know might be a work thing and then you think i can't believe they just emailed and said that it's absolutely ridiculous and and you're feeling annoyed. And one way of trying to deal with it is to think before you act, think, would I be as annoyed with this person if it was a different day and I wasn't feeling as tired? How much of me feeling really annoyed with this person is that somebody else has just sent something annoying as well. And I've got this to do and I've got this to do and I'm absolutely exhausted. And how much of it is that somebody else has just sent something annoying as well. And I've got this to do, and I've got this to do, and I'm absolutely exhausted. And how much of it is that? And that is, in a way, a way of being kinder

to the other person in your response, is to stop for a moment and think, is this all about them at that moment? Yes, they have been annoying, but would I have reacted differently? And yes, you might well have reacted differently if it had been at a time when you were, as you say, feeling more chilled out. Monday morning.

Yeah, and I try really hard to do that, to just sort of think, I'm so annoyed about this. And to then think, oh, would I have been as annoyed yesterday? No, because yesterday was a less stressful day. So I wouldn't have been as annoyed as I am now. And so I'm not going to, you know, do that. Tell me about this kindness test. Yeah, so the kindness test was, I'd already started writing the book actually, when then I was talking to my colleagues at Sussex University, and they have a whole kindness research centre. And I thought, there's lots of small studies on kindness, and I thought it would

be really good to know what do thousands of people think about kindness? And so Professor Robin Banerjee was the principal investigator on this. And he created, with a group of us, the kindness test. And so it's an online study, and it's got lots of standardized measures that have been used a lot before in terms of measuring how kind people are, and personality measures. And we looked to ask people about their religions, their values, all sorts of other factors about them as a person and what they thought about kindness at work, whether it's valued or not, all sorts of different things. And I launched it on All in the Mind that I present on Radio 4, the programme about psychology.

And then we waited to see would people take part. Now, it's the fourth one of these big studies I've done, and more people took part in this than any of the others, which is, I think, really interesting. I think people are really interested in kindness. They know that it's good and that we want more of it. And they sort of almost don't know how to get the more of it, if you saw to me.

And, you know, the nice person I was chatting to on the train this morning, we got chatting because I was checking a couple of figures about different things and experiments, so I had a copy of my book on the table, and she said, oh, that looks interesting. Have you read that book? How do I phrase I wrote that book? So I have read it.

Anyway, we then got into a really interesting discussion about kindness that other people then joined in with as well in our foursome where we were sitting there. And they were both saying, oh, I'm really interested in kindness. And I think lots of people maybe think that only they're interested in kindness and actually loads of people want to do things to do with kindness. So 60,000 people took part in the kindness test. So that makes it the biggest study of its kind of kindness that's in depth like this and some things were more depressing and some things were more optimistic so um two-thirds of people thought that kindness had either levels of kindness had either stayed the same in their lifetime or gone down but two-thirds of people thought that people

had become kinder during the pandemic so which is why i think now is a perfect time to almost harness that if more people have um uh being kind and maybe got to know people more in their communities that maybe that can can carry on because you know lots of uh certainly the the whatsapp groups i'm in have carried on and people carry on being nice to each other and helping each other and we all know each other a bit more now. What's there a difference in terms of men v. women in terms of replying? And also, I guess, different cultures. Like when I think of kindness, I think, well, I imagine different cultures will even express kindness in different ways. Was the study able to pick

any of this kind of stuff up? Yeah, so people from 144 different countries took part. More people took part from the UK. We did launch it on the World Service as well on the programme I do there. More people took part from the UK than from elsewhere. But we could look, we can look generally at, say, you know, different big areas of the world, big continents, if you sort of mean. And some of the differences there were the barriers to what stopped people, what they felt stopped them being kind. So kindness levels were not very, there wasn't that much difference between countries of how kind people said they were. And remember, this is people giving their own responses. So they are, in a way,

rating their own kindness, but they're given a whole list of things and asked, do you do, which of these things do you do? And people are very willing to say no to lots of them. So plenty of people put, no, I never give money to charity. So they might do something else. It wasn't people just saying, oh, let me show you and tell you how kind I am. So I think we can take people at their word because of the things people admit that they don't do, if you see what I mean. But the obstacles to kindness were really interesting. And so in the UK and in Europe, people felt the biggest obstacle to being kind was that they might be misinterpreted, followed by not having enough time. But it was very interesting that that came top. Whereas in the States, it was more about not having enough time and more about,

and people worried more in the States about the impact of social media as well. This fear of being misinterpreted, that's really interesting, isn't it? What was that fear of? So people said people could choose from those things and so they didn't say within that what their fear was. But looking at other research on it, I think it's interesting that people's fear is that the person doesn't want their help or that they might have misread the situation altogether and got it wrong

and that then they'll embarrass themselves and that then they'll look stupid. I think there's a big fear of looking stupid in front of strangers and that that puts us off doing things. And that is the biggest thing I've taken myself personally from looking at all this research is to think I am going to offer help in situations where I think I can do something really small, even if maybe I have got the situation wrong. I'm going to try anyway, because the worst that happens, I mean, they're probably not going to be angry. The worst that probably happens is that I just look a bit stupid and that that's okay. So the other day I was running,

I run a lot and I was running along the street and there was a guy who was trying to drive into a garage, but somebody had left one of those electric bikes just lying down across the street. And I was wondering why the guy in the car was sort of pausing and I'd run past slightly

and then I realised, I thought, of course, it's because that bike is in the way. And I thought I could just turn around and move the bike for him so that the guy can drive in. And then I thought, but I look slightly stupid because I didn't realise in time and then it means I've turned around and gone back. And that's a bit embarrassing, isn't it? And I thought, no, I'm not going to be embarrassed. It's still nice. It's still a kind thing to do so yes I had not realized quite fast enough what was going on and that's often that I find the situation I'm just too slow to work out what exactly what's happening and so I did stop turn around and

moved the bike and he looked really pleased and then I was pleased and carried on running and it took probably 20 seconds yeah do you think you would have done that a couple years ago before writing this book no no I would have there's lots of situations I can think of where I didn't, um, help because I thought, I thought, you know, they might not want my help or I might have got this wrong. And, um, you know, there was one where I was, I was, um, cycling to work and, um, and I cycled along and it was winter and it was really, really cold. And I saw on the other side of the big main road with sort of double lanes on both sides. And I saw a guy in flip-flops and shorts. And he was going along the street quite fast shouting, Lola, Lola.

And I thought I was just noticed because it was so cold. And I thought, oh, that's a brave outfit to be wearing in January. I wonder why he's doing that. And then I carried on cycling. And then loads of cars all screeched to a halt a bit further up. And there was a little dog ran across the road. And this woman in a raincoat was calling the dog saying, Poochie, Poochie, Poochie. And I was thinking, is her dog really called Poochie? And anyway, carried on oblivious. And then, of course, about five minutes later, I work out. I thought the man was looking for a woman called Lola.

He was looking for his dog. And the dog had had got out and that's why he was wearing shorts and flip flops because he'd run out the door after the dog. But he'd gone the wrong way. And the woman was calling the dog Poochie because she didn't know the dog's name I turn back and get the dog and put the dog in my basket and try and find the man? Then I thought, but the woman might think I'm trying to steal the dog because I don't know the man's name. And I'll just sort of say, oh, but there's this bloke up there. What if I've got it all wrong? And so I didn't help. And I hope that the woman got the dog back to the man. The sphere of being misinterpreted. It reminds me of a conversation I had a couple of years back on this podcast with Professor Laurie Santos from Yale, who's done a lot of the happiness. She runs that happiness course at Yale

and she said something in our conversation that... Just taking a quick break to give a shout out to AG1, one of the sponsors of today's show. Now, if you're looking for something at this time of year to kickstart your health, I'd highly recommend that you consider AG1. AG1 has been in my own life for over five years now. own life for over five years now. It's a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It contains vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important, especially at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut

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for keeping in your backpack, office or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. That's drinkag1.com forward slash live more. more. Our brain is kind of often wrong. Like our predictions are wrong about what are going to make us happy. And I think this whole talking to strangers piece, like the research you mentioned, we think they're not going to want it. They're going to think we're intruding or whatever. But the reality is, is that they love it. It makes us feel good and it makes them feel good. And I know in my last book on happiness, Claudia, I wrote about some similar research, but from Professor Nick Epley in Chicago, who did similar research on commuters and they were put into all these

different groups. And, you know, some of them was about literally do what you normally do. One group had to stop and intentionally make conversation with someone else. And again, same sort of results. Everyone felt better and those feelings of well-being lasted the entire day. So our brain in many ways, can we say that it's tricking us? I guess I'm almost saying, don't always believe your initial thought. Like, it's probably always better to just do the kind thing. Yeah.

Take the risk, right? Take the risk. It is taking the risk because you might embarrass yourself and you might look a bit stupid, but you're never going to see them again. So at this point, you can just sort of say, oh, sorry, I got confused. If you try and pick something up and give it back to the person and it wasn't theirs, then can just sort of say, oh, sorry, I got confused. You know, if you try and pick something up and give it back to the person and it wasn't theirs,

then you just sort of say, oh, sorry, I thought it was yours. And that's it, and move on. And so that is something I have tried really hard to do now, because I was so struck by this finding that the main thing was that people feared being misinterpreted, because that could be stopping loads of bits of kindness that are going on. or feared being misinterpreted. Because that could be stopping loads of bits of kindness that are going on. Yeah.

I guess if we think about Pinky and she walks around with these five, you know, single pieces of chocolate that are wrapped. If she was scared of being misunderstood, she'd never give it to anyone probably, right? So I imagine sometimes it was misinterpreted. People probably,'t know might be suspicious and think what's this yeah you know is it safe to eat or whatever but ultimately she just goes out there and and does it and it's been doing it for years right yeah yeah yeah yeah in that section you wrote about

concentrated acts of kindness i think you were talking about Pinky and saying actually there's more benefit or certainly some kind of benefit when you do lots of acts in one day rather than spreading them out in a week. Yeah, so there is a study where they got people to again do various acts of kindness

and they can choose what those are. And there's lots of these sorts of studies. But instead of spreading them across the week, they had to do the five in one day. And that gave people a more concentrated boost of well-being, if you like. And I think that's interesting. And again, that doesn't mean, well, don't do things on other days. But maybe it is worth deliberately picking a day and thinking,

right, well, today I'm going to do five nice things. What would be nice to do? And to just look out for those occasions. Of course, when we think of kindness, we can think about it you know with with our friends with our work colleagues with our partner with our children you know with with any kind of interaction but but bringing it really close to home a lot of relationships um i find it under strain these days. It's quite a stressful world these days. A lot of people don't have time to spend intentional time, undistracted time, where we're not looking at emails or Instagram or whatever with our partners, let's say.

And I think there's something really quite powerful about even intentionally trying to do two or three hours a day of kindness with your partner. Totally, totally. And I think back, if I think about my wife and I, I can think back to a few months ago where I just thought, you know what, why don't you just intentionally say yes, or every time, like, you know, sometimes we can get stuck in certain patterns oh you know you do that or yeah you know I don't know but there was something quite powerful about

going no you know what yes I'll just make you a cup of tea um yes I'll just bring you a glass of water um whatever it might be these are these are these are simple things but i just think the significance yeah and the impact is so much more than the actual few seconds or minutes it will take you to actually do that right yeah that we probably underestimate that yeah no i think we do and in the kindness test we asked people where they saw kindness the most and people people did say at home which was nice but what was also really nice was the the of acts of kindness, often at home and often from people they knew that were going on. And so when we asked people when they'd last received a kind act themselves, you know, 59% of people said it had been within the last 24 hours.

And a quarter of those said it had been within the last hour. So when you deliberately think, when was someone last kind to me? It's actually often more recent than people realise. But again, it's because negative things are always more salient. So, if someone's rude to you at work, at the end of the day, you're much more likely to remember that than the person who was nice to you at work and said something nice. So therefore, is it important, given that there seems to be more kindness going on than we might consciously think, a bit like gratitude where if you, you know, is it important that we actually specifically have a practice, you know, whereby we can actually recall three kind things that happened to me

today, that kind of thing. Yeah, I think that could work really well, just as the three, the gratitude works or the studies where people just think that could work really well, just as the three, the gratitude works or the studies where people just think of three nice things at the end of the day and that that improves people's wellbeing. And that's all based on Martin Seligman's work. And, you know, that was something I found really helpful during lockdowns

was just to think of the three things because also you then start looking for them during the day. So I was thinking during lockdown of three nice things that happened during the day, and because there was nothing else to do, it was usually to do with going for a walk or eating some nice food.

But also, you then start looking during the day and thinking, oh, that can be my nice thing. And you can do exactly the same with kindness. So you're looking out for three kind things, which might be somebody being kind to you or might be something else you see in the street and somebody else being kind. And that makes you start looking out for them. I mean, while I was writing the book, I kept a sort of kindness diary where I noted down things where I

was either kind or thought about being kind and didn't do it, or where people were kind to me or where I just saw them. And the moment you start trying to notice, you notice more and more and it builds on itself. And so I suggest people should be a kindness twitcher you know look out for it because we because the bad things are always going to be more salient and the world is not as bad as we think i imagine by i imagine by keeping that kindness diary you're putting your spotlight and your attention intentionally on kindness, saying this is something I value, this is something I'm going to look out for. But also, presumably, you're going to do more acts of kindness

because that's where you're putting your attention. Yes, it's almost priming you to do it and to be ready to do it, which is also a thing you can decide to do. You can decide, well, the next time I see somebody who looks a bit you know lost or confused maybe I'll say you're all right you know do you know where you're going and do you want do you want a hand extroverts the introverts because I hear that and go as an extrovert that's a piece of cake for me that is something I will do and it won't cause me any anxiety to approach someone and do that whereas I know some of my friends or people who um who consider themselves

introverts will say what talking to someone I don't know and ask them fills them with fear right so I don't know how does extrovert the introvert play into kindness yeah oh it makes a big difference so you so you know you were saying earlier, do we see differences between men and women? There was a slight difference in that we found in the kindness test that women reported slightly more acts of kindness than men did. So women were slightly kinder, and lots of research has found that. But didn't make nearly as much of a difference as personality type.

Oh, really? So people who scored high on extroversion carried out more kind acts for people they knew and people they didn't know. People who scored high on openness to new experiences and people who scored high on agreeableness. And the agreeableness one isn't very surprising because agreeableness kind of means kindness. But it's interesting that extroversion did make a difference there. And that may be because of the people who are extroverted not having that fear of approaching other people.

There was a really interesting study done with people with social anxiety, where there was a control group, but also one group who were told to do, very gradually do exercises that might gradually get them used to talking to strangers, say, or approaching people or doing something that would normally make them feel very, very anxious. And they very gradually built up to it. But a third group instead had to plan to be kind when they saw the opportunity or to plan some kind acts to do. So nothing was mentioned about socialising and their social anxiety actually dropped more by doing the kind acts because they were doing something kind,

they felt less nervous about what the response would be from the other person than if they just tried to talk to strangers. So if someone's listening to this right now, Claudia, and they say, okay, I'm with you, I need to do a more kindness I need I need a bit more kindness in my life but I'm quite introverted what specific advice would you give to them so I say to take it slowly you know start by doing some more kind acts for people you know and then just look out for opportunities where you can be kind and that could just be um uh you know when you're in the local shop buying something just saying how are you as you as you

hand over your money because they're not going to say how dare you ask that they're just not you know the local shopkeeper is not going to do that and but also to then not be upset and take it personally if they were too busy and didn't really hear what you were saying and didn't really answer. And the trouble is that people, and particularly people who experience big, strong feelings of loneliness, will interpret it and studies show will interpret it more negatively if the person, if they don't get the response they wanted. Which is usually just that the other person was busy. And then it's also important to think whenever someone is mean to you, you know, what is going on for them? You don't know what is going on for them at that moment.

And maybe they've just had some terrible news. And, you know, maybe their partner left them that morning. We just don't know. And to sort of think everyone's, nearly everyone is doing their best. You know, everyone's doing their best here. It's very rare for people to do deliberately cruel things. You know, obviously we hear about the ones who do, but it is rare. I think a lot about intention, intention behind the words we're saying, intention behind the things that we're doing. And then where I'm sort of landing at the moment with all this is that of course the impact of what you do is important but the other thing we can really control is our

intention right so yeah if you're clear that you are doing this because you want to be kind you almost need to get to a place or not need to I think it's helpful to get to a place, or not need to, I think it's helpful to get to a place where you don't mind what that response is. It can be great. It can be indifference. It can be someone misinterpreting it. Because I can't think of an exact example, but that has happened in the last few weeks, I'm sure, where something gets misinterpreted and as I sit with it and kind of journal on it or think about it it's like no are you are you can you look in the mirror Rangan and go yeah I'm okay with what I did I know I had the right intention and if I do I'm like I'm okay with that I'm not responsible yeah for how that person takes that yeah like I don't know what's going on for them. I don't

know how they've been conditioned. I don't know culturally if it's something different that they expect. Do you know what I mean? Like, I kind of feel it's a hard place to get to, but I think it's a really helpful place that we can work towards because you're less reliant then on people's responses. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. And that's where self-compassion comes into it because what you're having there is self-compassion and not being self-critical and thinking, oh, I must have done that wrong then. But to think, well, I don't know what is going on for them, but I tried. You know, I tried my best. And I always think with self-compassion, and there's really good evidence that self-compassion is really protective of mental

health. And so if people are very self-critical and if people, there's a fear of self-compassion scale, and if people score high on the fear of self-compassion scale, they are much more at risk of depression after that. And so it's really important to try to be kind to yourself. And we say to ourselves things far meaner than we would ever say to a friend in the same situation. You know, if you made a mistake at work and the friend was to tell you about that you'd say well you were probably you know really tired and you had too much on and you know it wasn't completely your fault and it'll be all right and you can remedy this and you know learn from it and it'll be okay and we don't say that to ourselves we say to ourselves oh you're a complete idiot and always will be self-compassion

is huge and i think it's something that many of us struggle with particularly in britain like i i've always i i feel that culturally here in the uk kind of saying you're going to be compassionate to yourself or dare i say it love yourself yeah yeah it makes people cringe a little bit inside yeah right and it probably used to with me but i i actually now i am i'm all in i embrace it like i i think it's really really important um you know professor kristen neff's been on the show before she's done a ton of research on self-compassion for over 20 years showing all kinds of benefits for our physical health immune system aging all kinds of incredible things in that chapter in the book you

wrote something that caught my attention which was have i got this right you said something about when a celebrity says this year i'm going to love myself more it makes you cringe a little bit yeah yeah why do you think that is i don't know there's something about i mean you may be right about it's this year I'm going to love myself more, it makes you cringe a little bit. Why do you think that is? I don't know. There's something about, I mean, you may be right about, it's interesting whether it is in this country or not,

or whether it's more widespread, but this idea of kind of, it's partly that phrase, love yourself, isn't it? Because that's been used as a way of, as an insult. I can remember as a teenager, we'd sort of think, oh, I don't like him. He really loves himself, doesn't he? Oh yeah, he so loves himself, that guy. And so we wouldn't like them for that. And so, so I think it's partly that, that phrase that

we think that, that this is wrong, whereas actually, wouldn't it be nice if people liked themselves, loved themselves? And, and then we know that, as you say, there are these, these huge benefits from doing that and huge downsides from not doing that but I think people have a fear that they will you know become lazy and that they will then let themselves off for everything and never learn from their mistakes and it doesn't mean any of those things exactly you can absolutely still learn from your mistakes and hopefully hopefully do and there is good evidence that people do just learn from their mistake you know some people you don't you people don't tend to make exactly the same mistake again and again and again.

Things change. And so it is so important to try to just say, well, I wouldn't say this to someone else, would I? I mean, there've been experiments where people write letters to themselves, you know, write a self-compassionate letter. So you think of something that happens in your past and then write a letter to yourself as if you were writing it to somebody else about expressing sorrow for that thing or understanding about that thing that happened to them. Yeah. This whole piece on celebrities saying it more and more is something I've thought a lot about actually and my take on it and it's I don't I really don't mean this to be controversial um but I kind of feel having spoken to and met a lot of people with significant public profiles a lot of people not everyone a lot of people are deeply unhappy

and the way I would summarize it is I feel that a lot of them have a hole inside their heart that they thought the fame and the adulation and the success would fill. They get the fame, the adulation and the success and still find that hole in the heart is still there. So I think they get to the point where they then make that public, you know, proclamation that I need to love myself more next year, I'm going to love myself. Because actually, I think if that person was my patient, that's kind of what I'd be saying to them. I think that if they could show themselves self-compassion, it probably would help them with their physical and mental well-being. So I guess it's also, it's a bit like that, you know, as we mentioned at the start of this conversation,

the wealthy public figure who donates to charity, we're like, yeah, we want to be a bit like that, you know, as we mentioned at the start of this conversation, the wealthy public figure who donates to charity, we're like, yeah, we want to be a bit sceptical of that. It's kind of like, I kind of think maybe there's a similarity there. I think self-compassion really is that important, but I think the narrative on it needs to change in all of us and particularly maybe in the UK. Yeah, I think it's an interesting idea. And I think you're right, there is that ratchet of sometimes people have some success and then, but that's not quite enough because they always see there's some more who are more successful. And so, and I remember Matt Haig talking about this very honestly saying that he always thought if he could just get one article published in a

magazine when he was setting out, this would be so exciting and this would be it. And then it was kind of, oh, well, if i could did that and then oh well if i could what about writing a book that would be amazing wouldn't it to get your book published but then people don't just want their book published they want their book to also be a bestseller and of course he's you know has done all that many times the rules change yeah the rules change as you succeed yeah and you know if you look on the outside about matt haig's so successful career yeah most authors would absolutely give their left arm to be as successful as him right i mean not only books he's then he has a film

yeah that gets huge global film it's so but i don't know i'm not i haven't spoken to matt on this show for about three and a half years i think but i wonder what matt's view on that now would be because it's it's all very well from the outside seeing that as successful but I wonder what Matt himself may not necessarily feel that way potentially yeah what's really interesting to me I want to talk about kindness at work because I thought this this was really fascinating area but before we get to that I'm thinking your last book was on rest we had a wonderful conversation all about rest, the importance of it. This book is on kindness.

And in many ways, you're writing about things that society typically, the way we currently live, doesn't deem that important. It certainly doesn't encourage us since we're kids necessarily at, you know, be kind, rest more. It's almost like, no, keep pushing, you know, work through, you know, work through the weekends, you know, don't stop, you know, hustle culture. There's no time for rest. I'll sleep when I'm dead, all these kinds of things. culture, there's no time for rest, I'll sleep when I'm dead, all these kind of things. Are you aware that your last two books are literally, in many ways, in kind of conflict with the prevailing societal narrative? Yeah, it's interesting you say that. I mean,

I hadn't thought of that as being in common between the two books. I thought of them as both being things where, topics where we think we know what that thing is, but haven't necessarily thought about it that much. I definitely thought about that being common. But it's true. They are both things where I was calling people to value rest more. And now I'm calling people to value kindness more and rest too. That still matters as well, obviously. And then when you rest more, I honestly believe, as I spoke about with the stress response, I think you are going to be kind more because you're going to be more rejuvenated, less stressed, more able to share and do things for others. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons also for being self-compassionate is, you know, if you

don't look after yourself, and we know that, you know, a certain proportion of people will experience burnout because they are giving so much to everyone else without looking after themselves as well and without wanting to ever put themselves first. And that does matter as well. What's the difference between kindness and people pleasing yeah it's an interesting one that because sometimes and sometimes a distinction is made particularly at work people will say well if you're if you're too kind at work could just be a people pleaser and you'll just get walked all over and everyone will assume that yeah you'll you'll be the one who'll sort out all those things and that they don't need to and and often i think the distinction then between kindness and niceness

comes in as well and there is the there is a sort of idea that being nice at work is a is a mistake um and that and there have been books written on this you know about you know sort of nice girls don't get the corner office and i think there's a slight distinction between between niceness and kindness but i think being kind doesn't have to mean being walked all over because sometimes being kind can be very hard and so say you know we were talking about ethical leaders and so for a leader to be kind a manager to be kind if you've got one person who is really is swinging the lead and not doing their work properly and leaving it to everyone else then you could say oh well it would be kind to just leave them doing that if that's what they want to do is not really do their work properly and leaving it to everyone else, then you could say, oh, well, it would be kind to just leave them doing that if that's what they want to do is not really do their work properly.

But then that's not kind to the other eight people who are doing all their work all the time. So it's not like it's easy. And I think particularly for managers, it's not easy to be kind. Sometimes that can be really difficult. And the kindest thing will be to talk to that person who's not doing their work about why they're not. Perhaps it's not the right job for them. Perhaps they're not really enjoying it. Perhaps their role could be changed. But that person who's not doing their work about why they're not perhaps it's not

the right job for them perhaps they're not really enjoying it perhaps their role could be changed but that's really difficult having that conversation so again i'd say it's another situation where kindness isn't the soft sort of easy option um and if a leader is going to be set out to be ethical then um and they need to the research suggests that they need to state that that's what they're doing then that uh is a risk in one sense you know because people will watch for that and people will be sort of saying well that wasn't very ethical what they did there was it and yet we know it can make such a difference but there's still this idea that um to be successful you've got to be you know hard-nosed about it particularly in say business or sport or politics that it's got to be

you've got to be hard-nosed and that's not really what the evidence says you know the evidence on ethical leadership is showing us that ethical leaders are very um are more likely to be successful in fact um and that the people who work for them are more likely to um stay longer and there's less absenteeism um have higher job satisfaction, stay in those jobs and all those things that are really important to do. There's an interesting study done by an American psychometrics expert called Joe Folkman, where he did, he got many, many thousands of people to do 360 degree feedback about their bosses. And he'd ask them lots of different things about what their bosses were like, including how effective they were and how nice and kind they were.

And he found that, and how likable they were. And he found it was so rare for bosses to be rated as effective and not likable that there was a 1 in 2 thousand chance of that happening so basically the likable bosses were so much more likely to also be rated as effective bosses and so it's not the case that if you're likable your staff will all just you know muck about and take the piss and not do their stuff they are actually much more likely to work with you if you are being kind to them yeah I think this is so important that we show people that actually you can win and be kind you can be successful and be kind it's not either or in fact I'd argue that being successful by being kind is going to feel better anyway like maybe you can do it the other way but I don't think it's going to feel better anyway. Maybe you can do it the other way, but I don't

think it's going to feel good. And are people going to like you? They're going to want to work for you, going to want to stick around. Highly unlikely, we think just on a human level, but obviously you're sharing research, which has actually looked into this. In that section in the book, you talk about these two quite powerful examples, I felt, these two quite powerful examples I felt where a boss has really potentially at short-term expense supported one of their staff members which has not only been a nice thing to do the right thing to do in the long term it's also had huge upsides for their business right yeah and they're really extraordinary these examples and they were from the um All In The Mind, my Radio 4 show. Every couple of years, we run the All In The Mind Awards

and people can nominate the person who's made a massive difference to their mental health. And people send in all these amazing stories, thousands of amazing stories. And we've had quite a few finalists where they were about bosses who were kind, who were so kind. And one of them, I remember,

he was the boss of a shoe shop, a sort of fancy shoe shop. And a young woman was working for him. She'd worked before university at the shoe shop. And then she went away to university and was having huge mental health difficulties and massive anxiety and real difficulties, had to leave university and come home for a while, but went back to work in the shoe shop. And she would end up serving, trying to serve a customer and then having a panic attack and having to go to the office in the basement. And in some shifts, she was spending seven out of eight hours in the basement. And the boss was saying that many people would have just sent a hope, said, well, you't be here today come you know you're clearly not coping come back tomorrow but he was absolutely determined that he would help her get through this not by forcing her to stay on the shop floor but by

allowing her to be in the office and trying to help her calm down and then saying when she felt ready she could go back to the shoe shop and this would happen for days and days and days at a time and he's trying to run a shoe shop here and this must have been really difficult because then there wasn't just you know he's one staff member down. And yet she, but she, through his help, she did recover and then was able to work there again and continue working. And he said the reason he did it was because he knew she was a really, really brilliant worker and that she was so brilliant at her job. And that he found himself in difficult situations in the past and really wished somebody had been really, really understanding

because he knew how brilliant she'd be again. And so there are examples where it is worth it in the end because what people get is somebody who will work really well for them and work with them. And it also matters in terms of small things as well. Before we get back to this week's episode, I just wanted to let you know that I am doing my very first national UK theatre tour. I am planning a really special evening where I share how you can break free from the habits that are holding you back and make meaningful changes in your life that truly last. It is called the Thrive Tour. Be the architect of

your health and happiness. So many people tell me that health feels really complicated, but it really doesn't need to be. In my live event, I'm going to simplify health and together we're going to learn the skill of happiness, the secrets to optimal health, how to break free from the habits that are holding you back in your life. And I'm going to teach you how to make changes that actually last. Sound good? All you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash tour, and I can't wait to see you there. This episode is also brought to you by the Three Question Journal, the journal that I designed and created in partnership with Intelligent Change. Now, journaling is something that I've been recommending to my patients for years. It can

help improve sleep, lead to better decision-making, and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. lead to better decision making and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. It's also been shown to decrease emotional stress, make it easier to turn new behaviours into long-term habits and improve our relationships. There are of course many different ways to journal and as with most things it's important that you find the method that works best for you. One method that you may want to consider is the one that I outline in the three question journal. In it, you will find a really simple and structured way of answering the three most impactful questions I believe that we can all ask ourselves every morning and every evening. Answering these questions will take you less than five minutes, but the practice

of answering them regularly will be transformative. Since the journal was published in January, I have received hundreds of messages from people telling me how much it has helped them and how much more in control of their lives they now feel. Now, if you already have a journal or you don't actually want to buy a journal, that is completely fine. I go through in detail all of the questions within the three-question journal completely free on episode 413 of this podcast. But if you are keen to check it out, all you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash journal or click on the link in your podcast app. So there are these things called organisational citizenship behaviours, which are the things

people do, for example, in an office where like putting printers, putting paper in the printer, or watering the plants, or just doing those little things that keep an office going and that make things work for other people. You know, noticing that something needs replacing or that something needs doing. And if people are unhappy, there's good evidence that if they feel their bosses don't value them, in the end, they stop doing those things because they haven't got to do those things. You haven't got to do that for someone else. They still do their job, but they do the absolute minimum because they don't feel valued in this workplace. So why should they think, well, why should I, you know, they don't value me. So why should I do this? If you've got a workplace where

you can make everyone feel valued, they will do all those things. And those little things make a massive difference to how everyone else feels about it. And that leads to lower, lower absenteeism, higher levels of job satisfaction, the fact that people go around doing those little things. You feel part of something together. I really love that example. There's many more in that chat. So if people get the book, they can read them.

That one about supporting someone who's really struggling, I just want to pause on because I think there'll be some bosses of companies or teams listening or watching this right now who may have a team member or a staff member maybe not showing up or struggling because so many people are struggling. It's going to happen in most teams. And I hope that if they are thinking of terminating something or moving on, just to hopefully just take a pause and go, actually, there is another way. Of course, all business requirements are different. I understand that.

And it's difficult. I'm not saying it was easy. And these examples, you know, they weren't easy. There was another one that was in a nursery in Scotland. You know, they weren't easy. There was another one was in a nursery in Scotland and she took on a member of staff knowing the member of staff was having serious mental health difficulties and made adjustments to make that make her able to work there. And says, you know, the woman is so pleased that there was somewhere that she could work that would do all this, that she is such a devoted and loyal member of staff. And of course, it's really difficult for people, especially when businesses are going through really tough times at the moment. And I can imagine people listening and thinking, yeah, that's all very well, but I can't be a member of staff down. But it is the toss up between, but you may have this long serving member of staff

who will then stay with you a long time and be really, really good, just for you putting up with the temporary bit somehow of managing this situation. Yeah. I mean, if we just go start first case, right? So where the lady would spend seven or eight hours, potentially sometimes in the basement, right? So one scenario there is that the boss, you know, maybe in a really kind and authentic way says, look, I'm really sorry, but okay. Option one is they can be really mean and you're not up to the job and fire them okay option two might be very compassionate to say listen I understand you're struggling but I just I just can't keep this business operational with this you know contact me in a few months if you're feeling better you know that that may be an option but this option which sounds as though it was the hard option,

what I find interesting as I play it out is, first of all, for that individual employee, wonderful, right? Supported boss who has been there with them. When they're better, as they get better, they're going to be there. They're probably going to stick around in that company forever or certainly for a long time. Less inclined to take the mickey, you know, be really, really conscientious. That's one benefit. Two, the other people in that business seeing that, they're like, God, that's really impressive. What a nice guy or what a nice lady that they supported. Another team member, well, I want to stick around here. So there's benefits there. But also I think the other benefit, which I think sometimes we don't think about,

and I'm very passionate about this because in my book on happiness, Claudia, I wrote about the three legs of what I call the core happiness stool. What are the three things we need for happiness? And one of them is alignment. So when our external actions match with our inner values. And that boss, right? I think it was a male boss, I think he said. So they may have a

partner. They may have children. If we start to imagine, yeah, I could get rid of that staff member and crack on and my business can be thriving and I can be making money or whatever. Like, can you, you know, can you look at yourself in the mirror that evening? Can you, you know, look at your kids and go, wow, if that was you when you were older. Do you know what I mean? I think that whole alignment piece is really also important. We can make the business case. But on a personal case, like,

we all want to be kind people, I think. Yeah. And we've been talking about what the benefits of kindness are. So what were the benefits to him? They will have been benefits to him of doing this really, really kind thing. And that he will have felt good about. And in fact, he was, you know, slightly surprised to be a finalist in these awards. He was sort of thinking, well, I, you know, I just did the right thing. And he was almost sort of saying, yeah, I did what anybody would do. This wasn't what anyone would do though.

It isn't. Not everyone would do that. And he did, but he just said he thought it was the right thing to do and that it wouldn't benefit her to just be off. You know, he knew it was good for her having this thing to come to each day where there were supportive people who were nice,

even if she couldn't really do much work when she got there and he didn't want to abandon her at home to recover on her own I mean I love that what a legend honestly I love hearing stories like that you also mentioned kindness in sports and I wonder if you could share that story of that triathlete and what yeah yeah yeah so there's a triathlete called Diego Mentrida and he was um doing his you know professional triathlete called Diego Mentrida, and he was doing his professional triathlete. He was in the triathlon, and he was about to come in. He was coming fourth, and he noticed that suddenly he seemed to be third. So suddenly he's in line for a bronze medal.

But he noticed that the one who was in front of him, he couldn't see anymore, and he couldn't work out where he was. And you can see this in the photos. He stops, he turns around, and he realizes the other guy's taken a wrong turn. And so he does the fair, right, lovely, kind thing, which is he stops and he waits for the other guy and says, this way, and lets the other guy cross the line before him. So he lost out on getting a medal by being so kind. So some people might say, oh, well, and he was not a winner, was he? You know, he lost. But he was going to lose anyway. He was going to come, not lose, you know, he was going to come fourth. He was not going to get a medal. But in the end, they gave him a joint bronze medal because it became well known what he did. He did get, you know, a huge

amount of praise. And he's had the joy of knowing he did the right thing and did a really good thing. Alignment. You know, it's exactly, yeah. So he feels good about it his reputation if you like is hugely enhanced i'm sure i think also you can't hide from yourself right so in those quiet moments lying in your bed at night like you know what you've done like all of us like we all know. Have we behaved authentically? Have we been sneaky? You know, would that third place have been meaningful to him? You know?

Yeah, exactly. He didn't know and he didn't deserve it. And he probably got, I mean, I don't know what happens next, but, you know, I'm sure his sponsors were. He became very well known. We're delighted. I just think the sponsors probably were delighted. Yeah.

Can't this work? If we just stay there for a moment. unknown so we're delighted i just think sponsors probably were delighted yeah it kind of work um if we just stay there for a moment you say in the book that firing someone can sometimes be an act of kindness yeah yeah so if somebody is you know really really not suited to their job then i do know bosses who've said that they think that you know the kindest thing is to do is to let them go because they're going to be unhappy forever doing this job. Now, of course, you can try first to work out, well, why are they unhappy? Why is it not going to work? But if somebody is really, really struggling and clearly miserable all the time

and really, really stressed, then to help them find some other work that might be better for them, that maybe it could be a different role in the same place even, could be the kind of thing to do than to try and, you know, hassle them into doing something that they just can't do. Yeah. I think also, I guess what I'm learning, and also one of the reasons that I was so fascinated by that part of the book, was, you know, how does kindness play out at work and there was a there was a there was a section you were writing about where it's not just about shying away from difficult decisions

there's a degree of honesty like sometimes the kind thing to do is to is to make a difficult decision it may be that someone doesn't like what you've done, but if you're doing it with, I think you wrote transparency, objectivity and fairness, that's also kind. Like being kind is not necessarily sugarcoating something, kicking a problem down the road, being kind. Like it's, I presume it's the manner in which you do it potentially that determines if it's kind? Yeah, absolutely. I presume it's the manner in which you do it, potentially, that determines that it's kind? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's got to be done kindly. It's got to be done, as you say, with transparency, with authenticity, and with honesty and being clear about it. And

that's why kindness isn't soft. That's why it can mean having really, really difficult conversations and bringing up difficult subjects and difficult conversations. And of course, it can mean, you know, maybe you have to cut the number of staff you have in order to keep the business going because of difficult times, because maybe there are fewer customers now and everyone's going to lose their job if you don't do that. Now, of course, that's very different from just saying, oh, let's just make cuts and everyone else can work twice as hard and the boss thank you and I'll take all the profits. That's different, obviously. Yeah, I think people can take a lot more than we think when

we're honest like if you said to your team guys listen we're really struggling here i i can't you know hypothetical scenario i can't keep all 10 of you on yeah right two people again like all the two people that he he or she decides to let go I I'm thinking they would much prefer an honest conversation saying listen you've been great in any other circumstance we wouldn't be doing this but I just simply can't afford to keep everyone on and because of a b and c you're one of the ones that has to get, like, again, I understand it will be painful. I understand there are issues there, but honesty is also kindness, isn't it?

Yeah, it is. And sometimes if there are situations where people might be able to be the ones to, you know, to choose whether to volunteer to say have redundancy, then it might well be that what you didn't know was that there was somebody who's, who's has actually always slightly wanted to do something different. and this might then be their chance to use their redundancy money to retrain to do the thing they've always wanted to do but if you don't raise that conversation you don't

realize that actually there's somebody who'd quite like to have this chance to do something different yeah you mentioned gareth southgate in this section as an example of someone who i think has had a huge degree of success whilst also being kind. Yeah, and it's interesting that he's been open about that as well, because that is not seen as the traditional macho football way to even talk about kindness at all. And yet he has said openly that this is part of his success and that he wants to be open and honest with people and transparent and talks about that and seems to be open and honest with people and transparent and you know talks about that and you know seems to to walk the talk yeah i think to recall gareth came on this show a

couple years ago and um one of the things i i think i remember him saying was that i think if he ever got dropped as a player with no explanation he found found it really hard. So I think from recollection that, you know, let's say with the England squad, if there's 22 people in it and there's only 11 who can actually play, I think he takes it very seriously to tell the people who are not in the reasons. And he sits them down.

So that is kind. He sits them down properly. He doesn't just do it like group text, right? That's it, guys. You guys are in, you guys are out. No, I think he takes it really seriously. And I really respected that. I thought, that's so wonderful.

Because all 22 players who are in that squad are going to be fantastic footballers. Yeah, and then he's having a difficult conversation with 11 of them. Yeah, who were already very, very successful in their own right. And actually, so with that in mind, is there a culture shift happening with respect to kindness

when we see leaders like Gareth Southgate and others practising kindness, talking about the importance of it? Are you hopeful that things are changing? I'm hopeful. I'd like to think there is. And I think it's interesting that he thinks he can talk openly about that and do those things. It's great. And I think, yeah, I think there are some leaders who are talking about that more. On the other hand, we know that there are also, of course, you know, companies who are not being nice to their employees and who are employing people on, you know, very low wages on

zero hours contract and not being fair with them and, you know, timing them going to the loo and things like that. So I think it would be, I'm not going to pretend that all companies are suddenly kind because I don't think that's the case. But I think it is really good when you see someone like him who is talking about it and then maybe that will make others think, well, maybe we can do this more kindly. But that's why a book like yours is potentially so important, right?

Because it's by raising awareness of something that we all kind of know feels good, but raising awareness of it, showing them hard scientific research to show the benefits physically, mentally, emotionally, for companies, for business, right? That is just contributing to the elevation of kindness in society, right? So there'll be someone who reads that book or hears this conversation who, a bit like me this morning, like, I think I'm a pretty kind person, but I don't think for a long time I've ever paid for someone's coffee before. Do you know what I mean? But it was reading that book that I just thought, why not? Why not just do it? So, and that was just a few pages that inspired me

to make a positive change. So hopefully that's going to be a lot of people getting inspired just to do a little bit more kindness in their own lives, isn't it? I mean, I would love that if that were the case, because it is a thing where I think we want to do it, you know, and I think we are, well, we know that we have, you know, evolved to cooperate. And this is why humans are so successful. They cooperate with each other. And that involves kindness. So in a way, and we know that there's lots of experiments where toddlers will be really kind, you know, we want to be kind, but sometimes it's difficult to do that. And so what I want to do is give people the evidence to say, you know, we want to be kind. That is your urge. And you're right to have that urge, because look at all this evidence it will even get you the the things you want it will improve relationships it will improve

mental health it can improve your workplace so why not do it is kindness i mean you kind of touched on it there a little bit about our sort of tribal origins is it innate to who we are? Like, is kindness, are we kind to people or is it something we have to practice and develop? You know, I'm really fascinated by your view on that. I think we can practice and develop and become kinder. So it is something we can,

and we can develop more empathy for people. And it's like a skill that you can learn and you can improve at. But I think we already have the predisposition to do that. And so if you look at these experiments with, you know, two-year-olds and people will think of terrible twos and, you know, two-year-olds just have tantrums and never care about anyone else. And yet there's these lovely experiments. I really love the videos of these where they'll have like an adult who's trying to carry a whole pile of books and open a cupboard door.

And even two-year-olds will go and open that door for them very often. And then they have it so the two-year-old is playing with a game they really like, and they will abandon the game in order to open the door. And then they have it so the two-year-old is playing with a game they like and has to climb over obstacles to open the cupboard door. And many will still do it. You know, they want to be kind. They have been called indiscriminate altruists. They'll be kind to anyone.

It's not just because there's something in it for them. So they'll be as kind to other toddlers as to adults, and adults might give them more stuff. So they will be kind to them too. Now, obviously not all the time because we have all seen those tantrums, but they can do it and want to do it. And I think if you look at how the brain's reward system works when it comes to kind acts and altruism,

we can see that the brain rewards us when we are kind so uh i do believe that we have we have evolved to to be kind and to be rewarded for doing that and so it is which is why it feels good when you are kind because our our brains are if you like built that way we've evolved to to have that reward system that makes us feel good when we're kind because being kind is so useful to survival because it is because being kind is builds relationships relationships help people survive yeah in terms of relationships what one of my favorite chapters uh what was was the chapter about be kind, you've got to be able to understand the views of others. I'm sure everyone listening to this, Claudia, at some point recently or in the past has struggled to understand the views of someone else and because of that has struggled to be kind.

So a big part here is empathy, of course. i wonder if you we could start off by you describing you know what what is empathy how do you see it yeah so i see empathy as as being able to see things from another person's perspective and being able to understand how they might be feeling about that where they're coming from with that and why they feel that way in a sense. And so I think, and that also, even if you disagree with somebody really strongly about a particular issue, it doesn't mean you would disagree with them about everything. And I think sometimes it's useful to think when you see somebody say something you think is completely idiotic online, that if your friend said the same thing,

you'd probably be much more forgiving of them. But they're probably really nice in other parts of their life too. Now, some things are inexcusable, like I've been listening to the recent podcast series about people trolling the survivors of the bombing at the arena in Manchester and that people accusing the survivors of making it at the arena in Manchester and that you know people accusing

the survivors of making it up and so on and obviously that is you know completely appalling and such a shocking thing to do to people who've been through so much already and and it is very very difficult to understand but with things that are lesser than that if they just have a ridiculous view on something it may be that everything else about them is nice. Yeah. There was a study you quoted in the book about something to do with, it was in the section on in-groups and out-groups, and I think it was about Manchester United fans.

And I don't know if you remember the study or not, about you're more likely to help and be kind to someone if they're part of your tribe? Yeah. So there's interesting research done on bystanders and when people will and won't help. And in fact, lots of people will help. And there's become lots of sort of myths about the bystander effect, thinking that people won't. But when they did this experiment, if people were wearing a Manchester United shirt and the people who were passing by, they staged things basically in the street and see who would help.

People were more likely to help if they were also a Manchester United supporter because they sort of thought, oh, well, there's my person. You know, I've got something in common with them. And people, we do like people who have something in common with us. And even if they're, you know, really ridiculous things, like people like people who have the same birthday as them better than average. And we all know birthdays are random. You know, it doesn't matter like people who have the same birthday as them better than average and we all know birthdays are random you know it doesn't matter if someone's got the same birthday as you but we sort of think oh isn't that nice and we look for those things in common with us and we show favoritism more than discrimination towards the the people we see as not in our group it's more often that people show favoritism towards their own group which of course

can result in discrimination in the same way because if you show favoritism towards their own group, which of course can result in discrimination in the same way. Because if you show favouritism to people just like you and give them all the jobs, then that is discriminating against the people who are not exactly like you. Yeah. You make a really powerful case at the start of that chapter that we've all got the capacity to be empathic. Emp is within us i think you mentioned some brain scans didn't you where um if you're being pricked with a needle the same region in the brain lights up as if you're watching someone else yeah we really can we really can imagine what that's like yeah that's empathy isn't it yeah which is empathy yeah and what's really interesting there is that if you and of course some people have to learn, say doctors, you know, have to learn to actually step back from some of that empathy in order to be able to do the things they need to do to people that might be painful in order to, you know, make them better from things. study where they push a pin against someone's arm or like a cotton bud. And you'll see in the brain

a different response to that in most people, because they will, as you say, they'll see the pain of the prick with the pin and not with the cotton bud. But if you do that with most doctors, they will not see that. There will not be a difference because they've managed to step back from that empathy of the person having the pinpoint to them because you need to. Because otherwise, how would you ever give somebody an injection? Because you're sticking a really painful needle sometimes in someone's arm.

So I don't know if you relate to that. I do. And I actually wonder if that is when that study was and whether that's changed. Because when did I leave medical school uh I think 2001 and as a junior doctor you know you're back then we would take bloods on patients and sometimes I remember in Scotland when I was doing gastroenterology, when you were on call for the weekends, like the first part of your weekends was doing all the bloods that were needed for those gastro wards. And, oh man, I've not thought about this in such a long time, Claudia, but it could

take you four hours because there were loads of people to do. We didn't have phlebotomists, so the junior doctor would do it all. And actually a lot of the patients on those wards would have very, very narrow, thready type veins, which were really difficult. You skill up very quickly. But obviously you're...

You've got to do it quite fast, presumably. You try to, and when you're starting, you can't do it that fast because you're learning. But basically you do it so much that I can imagine you at some point just switch off from actually a needle penetrating the skin. Whereas a lot of junior doctors these days, there's a lot more phlebotomists now. So I think junior doctors these days are taking less blood. So I just wonder how that might be different these days.

Yeah, well, it's interesting that there's a very new study where they got people to sew up very, do stitching on a cut on a very realistic arm. So it's clearly not a real arm because it's not joined to anybody. And the doctors were able to do that very easily. And many of the, and then the non-doctors found that really hard

because it does look like you're sewing someone's arm and they found that much more difficult. Whereas the doctors, you know, have to step back to have less squeamishness to, you know, how would you ever cut someone open? Even though they're asleep, cutting someone open is, you know, to most of us non-doctors is a, you know, terrible thought. is a terrible thought. That example you just gave about the families of,

was it the families of the people who were injured or killed in the Manchester bombings? I wasn't aware of that actually. But since you said it, it's been playing in my mind a little bit because a phrase that I think about a lot, which has really helped me personally in terms of my levels of happiness and contentment is if I was that other person, I'd be doing exactly the same thing as them. And the kind of idea behind that is if I was that person with their childhood, with their upbringing, with all the bullying experiences they had with the toxic boss they had when they were 18 you know if I had had their lives

I would be acting in exactly the same way as them and as hard as it it might be sometimes I found it very helpful because in every situation no matter bad, and it gets harder and harder with the more extreme situations, like I hear that and go, the people who are trolling, what are their lives like? What is their understanding of the world? What information have they been exposed to that has meant that they have that view? And just to be clear, I'm not excusing it.

I'm not saying it's okay. I'm simply saying, you know, you write about, what was it in that chapter, you write about the parents of a young lad, a 12-year-old who got killed in the IRA bombs in Warrington. Maybe, could you share that story? So Colin Parry set up, you know, a whole, there's a whole foundation set up, set up, you know, a whole, there's a whole foundation set up and has forgiven people and brought sides together and been absolutely determined. You know, the father who lost his son has been absolutely determined

that he doesn't want this to happen to other people and that what you need to do is bring all sides together. And, you know, had endless talks in Northern Ireland with people he knew were on the side that had killed his son and was just determined that forgiveness is the only way forward with this and that he had to use this for good as as you know many people do. I mean that's such an incredible story because I imagine most people would go you know what I can see other people's perspectives up to a point. There are certain things where it's a no-go. And again, it's not for me to say where people should draw a line, but I think that's very

powerful to hear a story where their son was murdered at 12, essentially, and they're able to forgive and move on. I once spoke to a lady called Edith Eger on this show who was taken to Auschwitz when she was 16 years old, and she was there for many years, and her parents were murdered within a couple of hours of getting there. And I spoke to her at the age of 93 a couple of years ago, a wonderfully vibrant, compassionate, forgiving human being. She's forgiven. And we think, and I wonder, and it makes me think a little bit about your chapter on heroes, right? Like we often imagine that, oh, you know, I could never do that. But maybe we could. Maybe if we

were, I hope no one's in those scenarios, just to be really clear. But I don't know, you hear those, you know, Edith will say she's nothing special, right? Yeah, and then we all think, but you're amazing. Yeah, you're doing this amazing thing. Exactly. So I wonder, coming back to this innate capacity to be kind, to be compassionate, to forgive, maybe we've got a lot more kindness and forgiveness in us

than we might think. Yeah, and people can do extraordinary things. And there are so many tales of people forgiving things that, you know, feel unforgivable to the rest of us where we where we do. It's very common to then say, well, I couldn't do that myself. And and this is what happens with the heroes. So I talk about all sorts of people who have done such a kind act that they, you know, save someone else's life off at expense to themselves. And they will always invariably say in the research, they say, I only did what anyone would have done.

And yet we think, well, you didn't, did you? Because you did the special thing or there were loads of people on the platform and you climbed down and got help to the woman who'd fallen off the platform. Everybody else didn't climb down onto the live rail and did that. So you did do something different.

But that actually seeing heroes as something special might make the rest of us less likely to do it because we sort of think, well, I wouldn't be able to do that. And instead that maybe we should think, well, maybe I could, maybe if there is a situation, um, and one piece of research suggested there might be a situation five times in your life where you can do something heroic to decide in advance who I am going to do it. You know'm I'm I'm going to step forward and be that person and of course we'll never know till those things happen yeah really really powerful really really powerful um empathy I as I say I really enjoyed that section because I I feel it's what the world needs more of. You know, it's interesting,

Claudia, back, what year are we now? 2020? It's 2021. I did the London Marathon for the first time. And although the event, because of an injury, didn't go very well at all for me personally, it was at a time where if you went on social media, you would think the world was very divided, right? If you switched on the news, which I actually don't do. But your view of humanity might be pretty poor. And then I saw, all I saw at the London Marathon, I just thought, this has restored my faith in humanity. This is strangers supporting strangers. People baking cakes and snacks and coming to give them to runners who they've never met before. People just cheering other people on. And I thought, this is who we are. Humans are naturally kind, compassionate. They want other

people to succeed. The London Marathon and many other events around the world will demonstrate this. But if we venture online sometimes, we don't think that's the case, do we? Yeah, no, that is true. And there are loads and loads of horrible, horrible things going online and people behaving in a way that they wouldn't in everyday life. And somebody quite well known was telling me the other day that his email is is not hard to find and he gets people saying horrible things to him online but has actually only ever had one horrible email even though people could find that and could do that but that there is something about social media that makes people think oh well i'll just say what's in my head at this moment in the way

that the rest of us might shout at the tv kind of oh how ridiculous instead they're writing oh how ridiculous um and so but it's just kind of keep oh, how ridiculous. Instead, they're writing, oh, how ridiculous. And so, but it's just kind of keep it in your head. It's like my grandmother used to say, you know, if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. So why not just not say those things? But at the same time, there are nice things on social media as well. I do think that's really important.

So there are all these people making all these, you know, really good memes and videos and stuff just to entertain other people. And there's also, you know, there's loads of, I mean, there are loads of feeds of kind acts where you can deliberately do kindness scrolling. And there've been experiments looking at, like, instead of doom scrolling, looking at kindness scrolling and what nice things you can see. But also there are loads of people helping each other and supporting each other. And people with really rare diseases are able to get support from other people who've been through the same experience of something really rare that wouldn't have happened before

without social media. So I think it is a question of, in a way, trying to use our power to follow people who are nice and, you know, not give attention, a bit like not giving attention to the toddlers, you know, don't engage with or look or even maybe comment on the ones who are doing the bad stuff because they get you know that we know how the algorithms work if they're doing bad stuff even if you argue with them they'll get higher they're getting the attention comment gives it the engagement algorithm says this is important pushes it up exactly exactly but we could start following when somebody gives a reasonable nuanced argument just think even though you may think well it, well, it's slightly dull, isn't it? But it's reasonable and nuanced. Isn't that what we need more of at the moment? So follow them, deliberately

follow them, and you can use your tiny bit of power. If everyone does that, people will start, the sensible people will start to be higher up. I mean, Claudia, this is honestly the idea behind this podcast, right? Genuinely, the prevailing narrative is, and you touch on this in your book as well, actually, the idea behind this podcast, right? Genuinely, the prevailing narrative is, and you touch on this in your book as well, actually, the prevailing narrative, it's got to be short. People haven't got attentions anymore. It's just simply not true in my experience.

Like it's, we do long conversations, hour and a half, two hours. And I've said it before, but as they've got longer, they've become more and more popular. I think people do want long form, authentic, nuanced content. The thing I struggle with on a personal level is we, you know, we have these, I hope, beautiful, long conversations where there is nuance and perspective and context. And then because on Instagram, you're only allowed to post a one minute video really for a reel

we you know we'll pull the team will pull four or five short clips to try and promote

the content within the podcast and sometimes I think you know is that the right thing to do because

you know we're trying to give the long-form causes but I'm okay with it because I kind of feel you want to take people somehow to the long i kind of like look this is trying to give you a snapshot yeah um but again and i and i we purposely put on every clip please note this is a short clip from a nice minute conversation to get the full context please watch the full conversation and the amount of people who ignore it or don't read it and still get triggered and comment on that it is it's and i get it right i'm not criticizing anyone i'm just

i just find it interesting to observe and go how do you navigate this it's pretty hard yeah i think yeah yeah no and i think it is and i think there aren't easy answers to it you know and maybe there might be more regulation about things but that won't, that's always going to be about the most serious things. So that's not going to stop people just being horrible, if you like. And the trouble is that just as I was talking earlier about, you know, if someone's rude to you at work, that's the bit that's salient. It's the same with something online. So people will remember the one nasty comment they got, and we all do it, you know, so people remember the, you know, the bad reviews comment they got and we all do it you know so people remember the you know the bad reviews their books got they can tell you the exact sentence that somebody said and not all

the good ones so you know unfortunately the negative is salient and we need to try to not let it be um and one one person i know is an an actor and she told me that she was taught at drama school you must um half the negative things that people tell you so if you get a bad review or somebody says something horrible about you you must think oh i'm just gonna half the impact of that they only half half meant that if you like but also half the good stuff as well half the praise too yeah that's a good approach keep it all a bit more neutral a bit more measured. Just going back to empathy for a minute. There's a couple of bits in that chapter,

which I thought was super, super interesting. Number one, which this idea that empathy is not always a good thing. Too much empathy can sometimes be problematic. You mentioned maybe the case of doctors potentially where you've got to be able to shut off so you can actually do your job, especially in emergency acute situations, I think. But there was this, I can't remember the term you used for it, around charities, whereas it was if we have too much focus on an individual. Yeah, yeah.

That's really interesting. Could you explain it? The identifiable victim effect. So this is the idea that if you may hear about one case, say, of one child who needs a particular operation because they're really suffering. And so you may then have, and I can completely see why families, individual families would do this, but one child may get, you know, there may be a lot of publicity, say, about this case and the fact that this child needs it. And that may then tempt people to think,

well, this child should go to the top of the list. And of course, there are the other 11 children on that list who are also waiting for their operations and who are presumably being done in order of need. And that they're waiting. And so by the focus on one, then does that leave others behind and put others in different ways? Now, of course, the upside, if you like, of the identifiable victim effect is that we know that if charities tell a story of one particular person, one particular family, say, then they will get more donations because it personalises it, because it's very difficult to imagine 10,000 people have lost their homes because of an earthquake. What does that even look like? You could see from above some of it, but you still

won't see the 10,000 people that have lost lost their homes whereas if you hear one person's story one family story about how awful it is you can really really relate to that and just as we've heard you know many stories from people in ukraine and and and the suffering there you can remember those individual stories and and relate to it identify with it and then it helps you see the bigger picture and what needs to be done and so those things those things matter. And then, of course, the advantages there, say, for the charities is that the money comes in and, of course, the money doesn't all go to that family who spoke.

It goes to, you know, amongst many, many people. But it gets people's... It allows people to relate to it because it is so hard to relate to a big number of people. Yeah. Claudia, it's been, as always, it's been very fun talking to you about another brilliant topic. Just to sort's been, as always, it's been very fun talking to you about another brilliant

topic. Just to sort of close down this conversation, we've only sort of touched on the surface of what your book covers. In terms of practical things, right? For, you know, this podcast is called Feel Better Live More. When we feel better in ourselves, we get more out of our lives. So have you got a few practical things that people can think about right at the end of this conversation yeah so one is to become a kindness twitcher so to look out for acts of kindness to look out for the kind things you do and to look out for the kind things other people do um another is to to really listen when one way of being really kind is to really listen so when someone is telling you a story you know not to be half distracted on your phone or looking over their shoulder to see who

else is at this party but to really listen and really really make it at that moment they should be the center of your world so at that moment you know really listen to them is a really kind thing to do um if you want to become more um empathic you need to believe that for a start that it is a skill where you can improve at that. And to reading novels has been shown. There's really good research from Canada on how people who read novels, their empathy improves. Because what better way to get an insight into the world of somebody you don't know at all, who may be living in a very different world from you and to find out what they're feeling, what they're thinking,

than reading novels is a really good one to do there. And then if you want to be kinder, to think, yeah, the little acts do count as well. It doesn't have to be something huge, but don't let me stop you if you want to do something huge. But also to think about how you might be kinder and to be sort of true to yourself in how you might be kinder.

So if you haven't got to start, I don't know, volunteering somewhere if that's really not your thing. Or maybe instead you'd rather donate some money to charity rather than volunteer. That's okay. But choose what are the areas, you can't do everything. What are the areas where you could be a bit kinder? You know, what could you do at work to be a bit, is there a way of making everyone feel a bit better at work and and to just try to think in every situation can I leave this situation a little better than when I got here love it Claudia what a beautiful topic to be writing about what a beautiful topic to raise awareness of and my my deep deep hope actually forget hope let's call it a challenge everyone

who's listening right now or watching straight after this conversation before the end of the day do something kind proactively do something kind wouldn't that be wonderful if everyone could do that love that claudia that's coming back on the show thank you ever so much for having me it's been fun really hope you enjoyed that conversation as always do think about one thing that you can take away and start applying into your own life. Now before you go, just wanted to let you know about Friday Five. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. In that email, I share exclusive insights that I

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