Good Life Project - How Kindness Boosts Health. Waiting for a Sign.

Episode Date: August 24, 2017

Good Life Riff: Ever hear the story about the guy trapped on his roof in a flood, waiting for a sign from God that he'd be saved? Well, turns out, a lot of us live our lives in a similar way. Waiting for someone or something to give us a sign, to tell us, "it's time." When, in reality, we are that sign. That's what today's riff is about.Good Life Science: And, in our Good Life Science segment, we're diving into fascinating new study on how one very specific type of kindness actually changes us on the level of DNA and makes our lives healthier and, very likely, happier. And, as always, for those want to go to the source, here's a link to the full study.Rockstar Sponsors: Get paid online, on-time with Freshbooks! Today's show is supported by FreshBooks, cloud accounting software that makes it insanely easy for freelancers and professionals to get paid online, track expenses and do more of what you love. Get your 1-month free trial, no credit card required, at FreshBooks.com/goodlife (enter The Good Life Project in the “How Did You Hear About Us?” section).Are you hiring? Do you know where to post your job to find the best candidates? Unlike other job sites, ZipRecruiter doesn’t depend on candidates finding you; it finds them. And right now, my listeners can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for FREE, That’s right. FREE! Just go to ZipRecruiter.com/good.Wondering what's for dinner? Blue Apron is the #1 fresh ingredient and recipe delivery service in the country, whose mission is to make incredible home cooking accessible to everyone. Check out this week’s Blue Apron menu and get your first THREE meals FREE—WITH FREE SHIPPING—by going to blueapron.com/goodlife. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Okay, so if you're like me, probably at some point, you've been waiting around for a sign that this thing you want to do is right. Well, that's one of the things we're talking about today. We're also going to be talking about kind of a cool study in today's Good Life Science update about how various types of acts of kindness may actually alter your genetic expression to make you healthier. So be sure to stay tuned as we dive in. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. So I don't know if you're like me, but I've had so many conversations with a lot of folks.

And this has been my experience too sometimes that when you're waiting to do something, maybe you're waiting to leave a job. Maybe you're waiting to say hello to somebody that you'd love to have a friendship with or start a partnership with in some way. Maybe you're waiting to go and build or create something or waiting to take a class. And you really want to do it, but you want to do it so badly or so goodly that, uh, that you're nervous, that it's creating anxiety in you because you don't know if it's going to work. You don't know if the answer is going to be yes or no. You don't know if you're going to be good enough, if the thing you want to do is actually going to be what you hope it will be, if the relationship will become what you really

want it to become. So what do we do? Well, we kind of wait around for a sign from God. We're waiting for the perfect moment, you know, for the last bit of data, the assurance and permission that finally convinces us, yes, this will absolutely work. The truth is, for anything worth doing, yeah, we may get small hints along the way, but the big signal that we'll succeed, it actually, with the rarest of exceptions, it doesn't exist. It's funny, when I was thinking about this, I was actually, I was reminded of something that actually I wrote when I was thinking about this very thing in my last book, How to Live a Good Life. So I'm just flipping the page open to, it's actually page 77 for anyone who wants to follow along if you have a copy. And it's about this one topic.

So here's what I wrote. There is no perfect moment. No time when you will know enough to guarantee you will get what you want. No time you'll'll be a hundred percent sure that you're ready to have a child, fall in love, take a job, move cross country, build a business, show your work, stand in your truth, pursue your dream. Still, at some point, imperfectly formed, with butterflies in your belly, you need to act, to own your unknown, to step into Joseph Campbell's abyss and therein discover your treasure. Experience an emotion dance in that space. It's where possibility finds its wings. The greatest creations, the most legendary relationships, the most treasured and heralded

experiences, innovations, works of art and lives have all come from people who were willing to live and act in the face of uncertainty long enough for greatness to emerge. And maybe that popped into my head, maybe that passage popped back into my head, because I've been sort of thinking about this. And I've realized that as I weigh a number of big potential new ideas, projects, endeavors, and start to build them and invest resources and time and energy in them, I realized that there have been moments recently where I've been waiting for that perfect moment. I've been waiting for that quote sign from God that things are right, this is right, and you're like, go ahead and do it.

And I kind of had to reconnect with the idea, the thing that I know, which is that there is no perfect moment. You can't think it into existence. You cannot wait it into existence. You cannot wait it into existence. You cannot wish it into existence. All you can do is act. Because that sign only comes when we put something into the universe for that universe to say yes or no to.

In the game of chicken where significance is on the line, we need to go first, not the universe. And then, and only then, will it be truly good life game on. Succeed or fail, the sign from God is you. And that's kind of the truth I've had to reconnect with lately in my own life. The sign is your own action, is your own intention translated, made manifest in the world with action, and then letting that world respond whatever way it needs to.

That's what I'm thinking about. And maybe if you're thinking about taking a big step into something where you have no idea how it's going to end and you've been waiting for the perfect moment, the sign from God, then maybe take the first step. Stop waiting. See what happens. Let that sign be you.

Your own willingness to act. That's what's on my mind. That's the invitation as we head into our quick break as always. And when I come back, be sure to stay tuned because we've got some really cool research actually. And it's about how kindness can actually affect us and our health potentially on a genetic level or an epigenetic level. Back with you in just

a moment. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required.

Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?

You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk. So our awesome friends at Freshworks make ridiculously easy cloud accounting software for freelancers and small business owners who know that making every single moment count is a really important part of getting a lot of stuff done and being able to do the things that they want to do in their business by drastically simplifying things like invoicing, tracking expenses, and getting paid online, FreshBooks has totally changed the game for now more than

10 million people. You can link your FreshBooks account to your credit card and debit card. So next time you expense the business stuff or the tank of gas or lunch, it just shows up automatically. They have notifications and awesome customer service. To claim your month-long unrestricted free trial with no credit card required, go to freshbooks.com slash goodlife and enter the Good Life Project

in the How Did You Hear About Us section. And we are back with today's Good Life Science Update, where every week I pull some kind of study research report that has hit my desk. I'm a bit of a science geek. I am not a trained scientist, so it's always filtered through the lens of the common person, along sometimes with help from friends of mine who are majorly science geeks and trained in these things. And I'm always looking for stuff, for interesting new research that in some way impacts our ability to live better lives, more specifically to fill one or all of our three good life buckets, vitality, connection, and contribution. Today's study is kind of fascinating to me. I have been for a long time really interested in kindness and how kindness actually affects us. And there's some really interesting research on kindness,

what in the literature is called in some way, shape or form, quote, pro-social behavior, how it affects mood, how it affects health, how it really makes a difference. So kindness isn't just good for others. It's not just good for the world, but apparently it's actually really good for us. seen research until now on a potential biological and even genetic level mechanism for kindness to actually impact health, to improve health, to reduce risk for disease. And there's a study out that's pretty recently out that I'll give you the name of the study is actually Kindness in the Blood, a randomized controlled trial of the gene regulatory impact of pro-social behavior. It was done by Katherine Nelson Coffey, Megan Fritz, Sonia Lubomirsky, and Steve Cole of different universities in conjunction with each other.

And it's kind of a fascinating study. I'll break it down in human terms. And so you can see why I'm so excited about it. And also, as always, we will provide a link to the full study report for other science geeks who want to actually dive into the protocols and understand this on an entirely different level. So what happened in this particular study was this. A group of people, participants, about 160 of them, were brought together. And for anyone who's interested, of that 160, about 77.5% were female. And they were recruited in Southern California. And people were told to do one of four things over a window of five weeks of the study period. And they were told to either engage in acts of kindness that were directed to specific people. So maybe it's buying coffee for a friend.

Maybe it's donating some clothing to a particular family or person. But it was directed at a very specific person or community. Another part of the group was instructed to engage in acts of kindness to the world, broader sort of things that would make a difference to the world, where they didn't actually necessarily see the changes, but they were served to, you know, like I'm helping the environment or helping huge populations or I'm helping a community or a country that's in struggle. The other conditions were acts of self-kindness. So being kind to yourself,

acts of self-care. And the fourth sort of cohort from that group was essentially the control group, and they were told to pretty much do nothing. Now, as always, some people drop out along the way, but participation was pretty good in this. And what happened at the end of this was kind of fascinating because instead of just reviewing people's self-reports and journals, this study took the extra step of actually taking blood work and taking medical panels before and after. So what they were looking for was could they actually do an analysis on a level of genetics before and after, and in any way see a change in blood work or genetic expression that was related to acts of kindness to self, to directed others, or more generally to the world. And in fact, that's exactly what they saw. What they were able to see in the study is this. Of those four groups, one specific group

showed something really powerful. That is the group who were doing pro-social acts or acts of kindness directed towards specific other individuals. And what the study showed was that there was a significant reduction in something called leukocyte CTRA gene expression over the five-week period, which is a pretty short period. Now, what does that mean in human terms? Well, the leukocyte CTRA gene expression is related to the body's immune system and the body's ability to actually sustain health and fight disease and lower inflammation. So in kind of mortal words, what they're saying is that acts of kindness directed towards specific other people actually affected, it helped in the gene expression that would allow your body to

essentially fight disease better and fight inflammation better. So it's kind of a really cool thing because this was one of the first studies that actually showed that simply doing these tiny acts of kindness on a regular basis over a pretty short window of time, only about a month, actually affected the gene regulation in the human being. And what we're seeing these days is that a lot of us think that our genes are our destiny, our genes are our fate. There's a whole emerging field of epigenetics, which is sort of what are the things that turn genes on and off?

And what we're seeing sort of in the world of science and medicine is that genes aren't everything. It's actually the state of those genes. You can have a gene for a certain disease or state of inflammation, and whether that gene is turned on or turned off, how it's regulated is a much stronger determinant of whether you're actually going to experience

symptomology and disease or not. So this is really fascinating research because it's starting to say that maybe our behavior, specifically being kind to others in our lives, can actually have an impact on the expression of genes that control health. That is pretty awesome. And I can't wait to see more research come out around this. I think this is the beginning. I'm sure there's tons of other research going on in labs around this and similar questions. I think we're at the beginning of some really powerful new connections that are going to be validated by science.

So that's what's on my mind as we wrap up this week's Good Life Science update. As always, thanks for hanging out with me today, and I can't wait to be back with you next week. And as we wrap up, I want to give a final shout out to our awesome sponsors and supporters. Right now you can post a job on ZipRecruiter for free. That's right, for free. Just go to ZipRecruiter.com slash good. Be sure to check out Blue Apron and get your first three meals free with free shipping by going to blueapron.com slash good life. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.

If the stories and ideas in any way moved you, I would so appreciate if you would take just a few extra seconds for two quick things. One, if it's touched you in some way, if there's some idea or moment in the story or in the conversation that you really feel like you would share with somebody else, that it would make a difference in somebody else's lives, take a moment and whatever app you're using, just share this episode with somebody who you think it'll make a difference for. Email it if that's the easiest thing, whatever is easiest for you. that impact one person listening, but to let it create a conversation, to let it serve as a catalyst for the elevation of all of us together, collectively,

because that's how we rise. When stories and ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change happens. And I would love to invite you to participate on that level. Thank you so much, as always, for your intention, for your attention, for your heart. And I wish you only the best. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.

The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot?

Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary.