Good Life Project - Michelle Gielan: Broadcasting Happiness

Episode Date: March 13, 2017

Michelle Gielan, national CBS News anchor turned positive psychology researcher, is the Founder of the Institute for Applied Positive Research.She is partnered with Arianna Huffington to study how transformative stories fuel success and is an Executive Producer of “The Happiness Advantage” Special on PBS and a featured professor in Oprah’s Happiness course.Michelle is also the best-selling author of Broadcasting Happiness.In today's episode, we dive into her journey from "coder kid" to TV anchor to positive-psychology researcher and change-maker. We explore the deeper psychology behind media, rational optimism, how the stories we hear, see and tell affect us and how we relate to each other both at work and in life. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You can be an optimist, you can be a pessimist. If you're rational, both of them see reality for what it is, right? They see the markets, they see the problems, they see the challenges. The optimist, though, believes that their behavior matters to make a difference. The pessimist won't attempt to do anything about it because, whether consciously or unconsciously, they just don't believe that they can affect change. Today's guest, Michelle Galen, was a CBS News anchor, and she made a pretty major change in her career. Went back and pursued her master in applied positive psychology from the University of Penn, and then became a researcher, wrote a book called Broadcasting Happiness, and founded the Institute for Applied Positive Research.

She has partnered with many different people and is doing some fascinating work and revealing some things about the human condition, how we relate to the world, to each other, how we relate to the work that we do in the world. It's really eye-opening. We dive into a lot of her work and her discoveries and also her personal story in today's episode. I'm Jonathan Fields. 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 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 are 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's the difference between me and you? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. I ran into an elementary school teacher recently, and she said, oh, you were lovely. You were so quiet in class. I didn't think I was quiet, but apparently I was. Oh, that's funny. But yeah, I was a rule follower and creative.

I loved art. I loved shop class. Anything tech-related, I was into it. I mean, back in the day, there wasn't the tech like we have now. Yeah. Anything you could build and use your hands. Yeah. So you had shop class.

That was before shop classes went away. I know. To me, that's such a tragedy. I know. It's like there's, I mean, there's something about working with your hands that I think is just so missing these days. Yeah. There was an empowerment that you felt when you use those saws and,

and you could build something and you could take it home. Right. Even if it was a misaligned birdhouse, it was still good. And I think everybody had sort of like the chessboard tabletop. It was like a mandatory project in shop class that you took home. We got into making skateboards in shop class when I was a kid. Oh, that's cool. We would do laminated skateboard decks and stuff like that.

Nice. And I think everybody had the shop teacher where there was like the story about why, you know, like they were missing the tip of one finger. It's like you have to have that story at every school. At some point you got into computers though. Yes. So my father's a computer consultant. It was no big deal around the house to have computers taken apart, put back together. And so I always just felt really comfortable around them. And that's what ended up leading me to when I had to choose a major because I loved everything, right? I chose computer engineering.

Yeah. What was your in your mind? it was more the resourcefulness that it asked of you. You had a problem and you had to figure out how you're going to solve it, whether it was writing code and writing up a computer program or wiring up circuitry and electric boards. It asks of you to investigate the world and figure out what you're going to do. Yeah, it's an amazing thing. I'm always fascinated by it also, because it is this integration of the physical and the completely in your head digital space are coming together. And if one little thing on either side of that is wrong, it's like the whole thing just doesn't work. Oh, yeah. I mean, sometimes you'd forget a semicolon in your long computer program,

and the whole thing was not working. But I think today what I drew from it is it's just the resourcefulness and the belief that you can figure out the problem. I don't remember how to wire up circuitry anymore, but I have carried forward that resourcefulness. Yeah. So was it your plan to actually go out and work in the field? Yeah. I mean, I did it for a few years. I worked as a software engineer in Boston. Very cool company. It was sort of an incubator of other companies at the time when people weren't really doing that that much. So around when was this?

This was in 2000. 2000. 2000, yeah. And then, you know, I sat at the computer writing code and I thought, I'd love to talk to people too. It's a very solitary job in many ways. There are actually human beings out there somewhere. Well, I had a friend, my only friend at the office, and she and I sat four desks away and we would IM each other the whole day. And I'm like, you're right there and we're not talking.

So I decided to move into software sales. I thought it would be, you know, more social. And at the time I took a job in London, you know, and it was just, it was a very exciting time overall. You know, it just wasn't a good fit. I wanted something different. And a friend of mine had talked to me about broadcasting and about being a journalist. And she made it sound really glamorous. You could travel all around the world. So I said, yeah, okay, I'll give it a shot. But what was crazy is I ended up leaving. So I was overseas, you know, at the time after London, I went to France just to kind of decompress and figure out what I wanted to do. And I see this ad on Channel One News's website. So Channel One News,

if anyone had it in high school, was a station that was for, it went into middle and high schools, right? And I looked at the time, I'm in my mid-20s, I look like I was 14. So this was the perfect station for me if I were going to do any kind of broadcasting. So I hopped on a plane, went to LA, I shot a tape in my living room. This is literally, I was wearing a tank top that said Havana on it. So I would seem kind of, you know, international or something. And then I edited down this minute and a half tape and sent it off to channel one. And then I just ended up, you know, hounding them for an interview. And one day I said, you know what, I'm not getting off the phone with this woman from HR until I get an interview.

And I ended up landing one there and got some freelance work. And that's what got it all started. That's amazing. You know, did you feel like you just had a knack for it? Because it's the type of thing where I guess I don't know enough about the field. There's a type of thing where you go to school normally, you get a degree in it, and then you work your way slowly, slowly, slowly in. Or do people just come from all different directions? Yeah, it's definitely, there's no one path. And I think that that to me was inspiring and led me to believe that this could happen. Some people start in small markets and work their way up. Some people start on the Today Show. I still haven't figured out that formula. That's a really

good one. For me, it ended up being, I got that freelance work, that tape that I got out of that job was just so professional and really well done, not because of me, but because of all these amazing producers around me. And it helped me get my first live job in El Paso. And then I worked my way up to Chicago and then ended up at CBS in New York. What was it about the world of broadcast that attracted you? What made you say, that looks really cool? Yeah. So what I loved more than anything was hearing people's stories. And in broadcasting, what you end up doing oftentimes as a reporter going out into the field is you're meeting people

at these really important moments in their lives, right? For good or for bad, just depends on the story. And oftentimes, it would surprise me how open people would be. They want to tell you their story. And so I just, I loved it. And then I also love being able to draw out the most important nuggets and being able to craft a story that's going to then be interesting to the viewer and gives them information that helps move their lives forward. So it's not just you're telling somebody's story, but you're, you know, hopefully making the world a better place at the same time. Yeah. When you sort of touched down that world, big surprises.

Oh my God. Yes. You know, I can understand it more in local news, but even I got to CBS and my newscasts were so negative. There were just so many negative stories and I'm drawn by the more positive ones. And it's not positive fluffy kitties and water skiing squirrels, right? Although those are important sometimes. You left out the skateboarding dogs too, by the way. The most important positive stories. Very important. But what I saw was this potential to not just talk about problems, The most important positive stories. And everyone is feeling very helpless because it feels as if this problem is completely external and there's little we can do. We decided to launch Happy Week. My producer at first thought I was crazy with this idea, but the idea behind it was we brought in experts from the field of positive psychology, the scientific study of happiness and human potential. And what we wanted to do was every time we presented a problem, we talked about what you could do about it, how to foster greater levels of happiness in the midst of the recession. So it was amazing. This one guy wrote in at the end of the week and he said,

I love this story, right? So this guy says, I'm from Oklahoma. I got in a fight with my brother over money about 20 years ago. They live about 25 miles away from each other, right? So they're basically neighbors there. And he said, we haven't spoken for these past two decades. But then my home's facing foreclosure. I heard through the town grapevine that my brother's home was facing foreclosure as well. Turn on the news randomly one night, and I see this financial expert on your program talking about what you can do to rethink financial challenges.

So you know what he ended up doing with this information? He reached out to his brother. They pooled their resources. They saved one of their homes and then they ended up moving in together. Oh, wow. Cool, right? Yeah. potential for sparking this small mindset shift that could create that positive action in someone else's lives that I just wanted to understand more about the science behind it, the mechanics of it.

And that's what drew me to positive psychology. Yeah. How hard was it to sell that story to the like the producer level? Because within the industry, and it's really interesting. So I actually had a book come out in January 2009, where the fundamental message of the book was build your living around what really lights you up. And very often that means like leaving what you have now. And so it literally came out in the single worst week of the economy since the Great Depression. Not the right message. So we were reframing and saying, hey, listen, this is, you know, the real deeper message here is that for so many people that have felt like they're locked into something that they just can't leave, like they would love to do something else. They would love to retrain or just, you know, go and do, but they won't have

the social permission to do it. And they feel like they're just locked in for life. So many people who are losing their jobs is horrible. There's pain all over it. We acknowledge that. And at the same time, this is an incredible opportunity because you can't go back for the first time for many people in decades. You've got the social permission to face forward and retrain. To the one, producers were coming back to us and saying, we get it. We agree with you. And we actually love your book. We can't put that on the air. So I'm curious, like behind the scenes, especially in that window, what was it like trying to sell this idea of telling stories in just a very different way? Well, yeah, I mean, it sort of, it goes, I think, against the grain of the

way the industry has developed, but not how the individual producer or journalist wants to be in their job. I worked with amazing people, right? These were optimistic, hopeful, energized journalists who want to tell these incredible stories and do good for society. And yet I think the structure around them doesn't necessarily support doing that all the time. And so we get caught in these negative sensationalism stories. And I think it's actually doing a disservice for society. So since CBS, what I

ended up doing is I partnered with Arianna Huffington and my husband, who's also a researcher, Sean Acor. And what we've looked at is the influence of news on the brain. And what we found is that just exposing your brain to three minutes of negative news in the morning can lead to a 27% higher likelihood of you reporting a bad day, but that's as reported six to eight hours later. So what's significant about that is like, instead of taking your vitamin in the morning, getting this dose of negativity, it actually clouds the lens through which you view your work, your time with your family. You're still feeling the effects as you're cooking dinner that night, which I think is significant. But

we find that when you flip the formula and you start talking not just about problems, but exactly what we did during happy week, you talk about solutions, you transform how other people process their world. So we found in our follow-up study that talking about solutions, in addition addition increases creative problem-solving abilities of the people you're talking to by 20%. You're basically making them smarter. You make them feel better. Their negative mood is alleviated.

And so what it shows is that there's a scientific basis for transforming the way we tell stories. And listen, this is not to say, I mean, there's tons of journalists that are telling these incredible stories. They understand the significant impact, right? But I think the news media, the structure as a whole needs to shift to support more of that.

Yeah, I mean, what do you think is the reason? And again, we've seen some shifts, I think. You could argue that everything that Oprah has put her hands on over a number of decades now was designed to in some way tell different stories or tell need to succeed. And I guess, have you researched, is that true or is that just mythology? So this is an excellent question. And what we're seeing is that the business of media is following an antiquated formula. What we're finding in our research is actually where it seems like negativity and sensationalism sell because it initially might draw eyeballs. When you look at the likelihood of someone to share that information with their networks and therefore make that story last longer. Word of mouth. Yeah.

Significantly lower likelihood. There was a study done by Jonah Berger at the University of Pennsylvania at Wharton. And what he did was he looked at the New York Times over a three-month period and people's likelihood to share news articles. And if you compare a negative story to a positive story, people are significantly more likely to share those positive stories. If you have it be emotional where people's likelihood to purchase that product or service. Right? And there was a study at Stanford that found 24% lower likelihood. So for a business that wants to, you know, and I mean,

think about it. If I know, if I just saw on the news that the apocalypse is coming, I'm not necessarily going to go and buy a new car, right? Why would I do that? I'm going to hold tight to my purse strings, you know, with this preliminary data that we're just getting back. But what we're finding is that when you place an advertisement next to positive content, you feel likelihood to purchase, feelings towards a brand. And we found by as much as 30%, there's a 30% swing there. So what it says is that for news executives who are looking to survive in this economy by producing solutions focused, inspiring good content, you're actually pleasing the advertisers who are fueling your bottom line.

So it's kind of a win-win all around. Yeah. But you know, I mean, I totally, I see that and it makes total sense to me. The traditional media is fueled more by branding dollars than response dollars. So it's interesting because you're talking about like actually measuring response, which is at the bottom line, that's what businesses want, right? They actually want to see that, hey, it's not just about, you know, like customers are aware of us. They're actually, they're buying our stuff. We're serving them. We're helping them. And that's what you're measuring. Which interesting to me is that's not the way that TV works. You know, it's not the way that radio works. It's all, it's largely branding dollars. And there's no easy way to actually measure response rather than just sort of like exposure. So if you're generating research that shows like on this level, it actually is affecting response, which is affecting bottom line. Now, hopefully that trickles up into the bigger media where it's not immediately measurable or as easily measurable. And they're like, huh, let's rethink this. Because if it affects the flow of dollars into media, it's going to affect the programming. like content that's solutions focused or more positive, right? I just have to say, oh, I want

this slot or this many eyeballs, hopefully, or whatever it is. So the hope is that this research ultimately becomes industry transforming. Yeah. So cool. And so interesting. It's interesting also that there is that mythology that was built up around it. It seems like, and I wonder how that ties into sort of know, sort of like the classic negativity bias, this idea that our brains automatically default more towards the negative, like, there's more attention that gets drawn towards the negative than to the positive, you know, and there's all this research that shows that you actually need more positive interactions to offset that bias. Do you think that plays into sort of those underlying assumptions? Absolutely. Yeah, you're spot on. It's originally news back in the day, right, was information that

you needed to know to stay safe. So you survived, right? And now we see that it's, you know, it's our negativity bias focusing on all the problems in the world. We need to know the problems, right? But in the midst of that, it's important to remain rationally optimistic. And we look at the influence of being rationally optimistic at work and in response to challenges at home. When we believe our behavior matters in the midst of challenge, when we take a realistic assessment of what's really happening and apply our behavior and connect more deeply with the people around us, that's when we get the most incredible results. If we're just looking at the world and saying, here are all the problems, it leaves our brain feeling helpless and hopeless, right? A barrage of negative news stories, then this is not just on the news. This is if your

business is anywhere. If your business is experiencing problems, your family, a barrage of negative information, it feeds us this lie that our behavior doesn't matter. That's the true problem there. If I see problem, problem, problem with no talk of solutions, my brain gets stuck there. And then ultimately, all of us would feel less motivated to put one foot in front of the other and walk ourselves out of that challenge. 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 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are 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. Yeah, and it makes perfect sense.

You used the phrase rational optimism. Take me deeper into that. Yeah, so we developed something called the success scale, which is an assessment we use. And what we wanted to understand, and this is built upon research that was done in the academic world. What we wanted to understand is if you show up at your job, what's really going to make you truly successful there? What is it about our minds and how it works? Because I can train someone on skills and information that they need to know, right? But what is it in our minds that make a difference? And the number one thing we've found is this idea that you're rationally optimistic at

work, especially in the midst of challenges. It's believing that it's expecting good things to happen and believing that your behavior matters. People at work, for instance, in our research who are in that top quartile, that top 25%, five times more likely to be highly engaged in their jobs, three times less likely to burn out. It's a protective factor. My husband, I mentioned him, Sean Acor, he's very funny. And so he goes to talks, and then he'll come home with these great stories. And he said to me, you know, so I went to this company, I gave a talk, and I talked about being rationally optimistic. The CEO after the talk said, you know, so I went to this company. I gave a talk and I talked about being rationally optimistic.

The CEO after the talk said, you know, let me give you a ride to the airport. I want to talk more about this and figure out how we can embed this in our company. And so Sean says, great. Gets in the guy's nice car and puts on a seatbelt. And then the guy gets in, doesn't put on a seatbelt. And so Sean thinks he's making a joke, right? And turns to the guy. Oh, the little bell starts going off, by the way, ding, ding, ding, reminding you. And so Sean turns to the

guy and says, oh, you don't wear seatbelts? And the guy says, no, man, I saw your talk. I'm an optimist. Sean's like, no, dude, you're an idiot. That's delusional optimism. Right. Like optimism doesn't stop cars from hitting us or reality from impinging upon us. are some people preaching that never, ever, ever go dark side and never face the reality that there may be stumbles and challenges and just stay 100%. Everything's awesome and it's going to be awesome. And that's what I'll invite into my life. And I think a lot of people hear that and they're like, okay, so they completely discount the whole larger exploration of cultivating a positive state of mind because they just think it's this whole sort of like Pollyanna fake delusional thing. Whereas there is this middle ground, which is like, no, there's actually, there's a way to be rational within the scope of, you know, like really seeing

possibility. Absolutely. And you know, you can be, you can be an optimist, you can be a pessimist. If you're rational, both of them see reality for what it is, right? They see the markets, they see the problems, they see the challenges. The optimist, though, believes that their behavior matters to make a difference. The pessimist won't attempt to do anything about it because whether consciously or unconsciously, they just don't believe that they can affect change. And that I think that's the difference there. So in our businesses, when we are rationally optimistic, what we found is that it makes a tremendous difference on the bottom line of the organization, levels of engagement. I mean, it raises creative problem solving, like we mentioned, by 20%, your levels of productive energy by 31%.

Even your mindset, when you're rationally optimistic, decreases the negative effects of stress by 23%. It doesn't change the outside world, it changes how we process it, and ultimately changes results. Right, which leads to the big question, which is, how do we get rationally optimistic? What you've seen, because in your work, I'm sure you've been exposed to like large numbers of people now, when you go into somewhere, do you have information or do you have a strong sense for, you know, in any given hundred or thousand people, what's the default state that you walk into in terms of the spectrum between delusional slash rational optimism versus,

you know, like pessimism? Like where do most people kind of settle in and where's like, is there a natural starting point or is it just across the full spectrum? It's completely individual. Yeah, I've had the blessing of working now with thousands of people, you know, as I give talks around the country. And what we find, you know, it's really interesting. So there are people who are pessimistic and negative and very expressive of it, right? And oftentimes I get asked by a more positive person how to deal with one of those people on their teams. I would imagine that people express it more when

they're negative. I don't know. It just seems like we like to complain as a society. There's something almost fun about it. So it just seems like that side gets expressed more. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So sometimes I'll be asked, well, when I want to create culture in my company or people think about a meeting, right, that's tanking because someone's complaining, who's more powerful? Is it the positive person or is it the negative person? And the reason they're asking is because it seems like that negative person is more powerful, right? They're so expressive. What we find though, is it's not the most positive person who's more powerful. It's actually not the most negative person either. It's the person who speaks up most about their mindset because they are through their words and

even their non-verbals, they're changing other people constantly, changing their focus of what they're looking at, right? You present a problem or an idea in a meeting, that negative person can take it in a whole crazy direction, right, if they're not reined in or whatnot. But what's even more fascinating, though, is that – so we did a study with Trading Magazine, and we found that 31% of people in any company, any given – this is cross-industry – are optimistic, but they're not expressive of that mindset, right? So you've got people that are positive and talking about it, and then you've got those negative people, but there's this contingent, one in three people sitting near you could actually support your idea, they just don't say anything. And I think that that's, the more we can get those people to speak up, the better chance we have of having a positive company and enjoying the benefits of that. So there's like a silent positive majority of us. Yeah. So interesting. What's your sense of

why they don't speak up? I think that they're sometimes, well, I think it's a combination. So sometimes they internally, and again, consciously or not, they say, well, I'm good with this. And so I'm cool. And they don't feel as if they need to say anything because everything's fine in their world about the idea or whatnot. And then I think also there is, you know, sometimes there's a fear of looking Pollyannish. If I can prove my value here, if I find the pitfalls and the problems, and if I'm okay with stuff, maybe I should just keep silent. Yeah. I mean, that makes sense. Something else popped into my mind as you're talking,

I'm curious what you think about this. I wonder if part of what's going on there too, is that probably the positive comments in a meeting and a business setting is going to be in the direction of backing something. If you end up backing something that fails, you've got exposure. Because now you've got ownership on some level. And I wonder if there's a fear of that that stops people with that positive orientation from actually speaking up. Do you have any sense of that? That's very interesting, right? Because if you tear down an idea, even just mildly so, and you don't back it and it succeeds, well, that's

amazing. You're just playing devil's advocate so you can be realistic. Right. And if it fails, told you so, right? Versus the other way. But it's exceptionally important to have as many of those positive comments while maintaining, you know, reality and not ignoring problems. Because if we just stay too mired in what could go wrong, we never allow our brain to enjoy the possibilities of what can go right. Yeah. And I think also it's that fear of if I put my voice behind something that then goes south, you know, how's that going to affect me and my career and my status, my position? I wonder if that like really stops a lot of people from sort of revealing their bad positive

selves, you know, like more often than not. Yeah, it's interesting. I've done a bunch of work on how people move through uncertainty. And, you know And there's a very powerful fear-based response to taking action or making decisions known in the face of less imperfect information. And it stifles so much. But yeah, I guess it's probably this cocktail of all these different things kind of adding to that dynamic. So I want to circle back though, because one of my questions was, okay, if you are not that person who is just sort of like more towards the positive side, the rational optimist,

are there things that you can do to move from more of a negative or a pessimistic side to being more open, to being more optimistic rationally? Yes, absolutely. And so the most exciting part of the research that we've been doing is that we see over and over and over how malleable your mindset can be. And it doesn't take much actually to transform your mindset. So there was, there's a great study, I love this, done with 80 year old grumpy pessimists, had eight decades to practice their pessimism. And researchers took them and said, okay, we just want you to do something really simple.

We want you to write down three things that you're grateful for, new and unique, each day for a period of 21 days. And they tested them at the beginning of the process. They were testing as moderate-level pessimists. They tested them on day 14. They were testing as low-level pessimists. They tested them on day 14. They were testing as low level optimists. If they kept the practice up for six months, the overachievers, right? Those people were testing as low to moderate level optimists. So what we saw is that you can move the needle at any point in your life. The key is to continually get your brain to focus on the fueling parts of reality,

the meaning embedded in the work that parts of reality, the meaning embedded in the work that you're doing, the meaning in the relationships that you have, the positive moments that you experience. So a gratitude practice, for instance, is phenomenal. My favorite positive habit that we've studied and that we found really does work to recommend is this idea of emailing positivity, which is, so I, you know, when I talk to folks at companies, I always give them a 21 day challenge. I, you know, I encourage you to do this, but the instructions are very simple. It's each morning when you open up your email, before you look at your email, this is important, open up a new message and write to someone new and different.

You want to send them a two minute email praising or thanking them. So you're looking for someone, anyone, you know, I mean, this can be a colleague, a friend, a family member, or your high school English teacher, or your track coach from whatever. And you want to keep it short, just two or three lines, literally two minutes. I've had people say, oh, that first day out of the gate, I wrote a 30-minute email to my mom, and it was awesome. I made her cry. And the next day, I was exhausted. Right. So and what's really – I think the real benefit there is what you're doing is you're getting your brain to focus on the people that have loved and cared about you and invested in your success over the years. You're meaningfully activating them as you praise or thank them for something that they've done.

And by even day three, four, five, your brain starts to see what incredible social support you have in your life. Social support is the greatest predictor of long-term levels of happiness that we have in the research. You don't have to have a ton of friends and 5,000 people on Facebook or whatever. You just have to have a handful of deep, meaningful connections with people that you care about, and that can make all the difference. Yeah, I love that. It's so interesting because it sort of bridges the gap between the Daily Gratitude Journal and Seligman's Gratitude Visit. It kind of makes the visit easier and more doable on a daily basis, whereas his classic

version is just much more, write a full page thing, go to somebody's house, sit down with them, read it, which is incredibly powerful, but it takes a lot of effort to actually make that happen. So I love the fact that this is something you can do every day with the daily email. Talk to me more about connection. This is another fascination of mine about social support. I remember spending some time with, what's the that super long term study that came out of Harvard, the grant. And at the end of it, you know, I just remember somewhere, the latest curator was asked,

what is the answer to living a good life? And he's basically love full stop. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit

Peloton at onepeloton.ca. 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 10 available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum compared to previous generations iphone 10s are later required charge time and actual results will vary mayday mayday we've been compromised the pilot's a hitman i knew you were gonna 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. Take me a little bit more into this idea of social support and connections and how valuable that is. Yeah, so that gives you the opportunity all the time to express your love and practice this ability to love others while also getting this really amazing feedback loop oftentimes, right? Because you invest in the happiness and success of others.

They then pay, you know, end up deepening the relationship with you, pay more attention, and it's just absolutely beautiful. So social support for me is, I mean, I know the effect of my life, right? When I'm spending too much time by myself and not connecting deeply with the people around me, that has detrimental effects. Not just because, I mean, I think I'm an ambivert. I don't know exactly. I haven't done all those assessments, but I am an extrovert in some cases. I like the recharge of connecting with other people. But I also do very much value quiet time and being by myself.

So I mentioned the job that I took in London, right? And I was so excited. I get there and I'm living the dream, traveling. My boyfriend moved over with me and we're traveling to amazing places on weekends and everything. But what ended up happening was the company that I worked for, it was an hour and a half outside of the city. So I worked from home by myself. I had no real friends other than him. And I kind of knew in the long run, that relationship really wasn't going to be the one, right? And I ended up falling into depression as a result. And so I battled it for about overall, about a year. And this is why I believe so much in the research that we're doing now.

And because the same positive habits that I use to walk myself out of that experience are the things that we look at now to understand, okay, so if you're going to do gratitudes, how exactly do you do it? What's the method that's been the best? Because we know all this stuff, connecting to people, gratitudes, and filling our minds with positive information. We've known since the beginning of time that this stuff is good for us, right? Intuitively. But I think what differentiates positive psychology and the sciences is understanding the mechanics of it. And so if I'm going to invest my two minutes a day, what's the best investment in my time I can make?

So for that experience, I turned to exercise, almost fell off the treadmill. My first day back at the gym, I used to run track, I should have been better at it, but whatever. And then I, you know, in my book, I write about this idea of fact-checking, fact-checking anxious thoughts that you have and finding real facts in your reality, in your life that can show you this new picture. So I needed to look for that new picture so I wouldn't feel depressed any longer. Yeah. So then you were at a point where – because this was pre – before you actually went back and started studying this stuff. So you just kind of intuited your way out of it. Yeah, I figured probably the best thing to do was take a mind and body approach.

You know, I don't know. It's hard to even think back exactly how I figured out that those two things would work for me. I just, every day at 11 o'clock, I pushed myself off to the gym. And I just, I made it 11 o'clock, I pushed myself off to the gym and I just, I made it a thing that I had to do. And I noticed, you know, listen, after the first day, I felt a little bit better. The second day I felt a little bit better after. And then I could just feel that it was making a big difference. And then the mind side of figuring out, hey, you know, whatever I'm seeing, the way I'm looking at life, it's just not working for me. And so I have to rethink all of this.

Yeah. What occurs to me, what jumps out also is that, you know, it wasn't like, hey, I went to the gym the first time and I came home and everything was awesome. No. You know, but I think we have this expectation of that these days. We have everything has gotten so fast, you know, like the information cycle, the expectation of outcomes and results. We're kind of like we're training ourselves for instant across every spectrum in life. And when it comes to sort of rewiring your brain and your state, it's a practice. It's not like a momentary intervention. It's something that builds over time. And I think we don't like that. So, you know, we're always trying to hack the system or giving up because it's not happening tomorrow. Yeah. You know, listen, it's great to look in any domain of our life for easier ways that we can accomplish what we want to accomplish. But the bottom line is that we need to continually be

looking at this as a practice and just work at it. It's not a crazy amount of work. And actually, oftentimes, it's addictive, right? We do something, we have a good result, we want to do it again. But this instant gratification culture that we've created, it's unfortunate, because I think what ends up happening is sometimes someone says, oh, well, after the first day, I should feel better and I don't. And so then maybe this wasn't working. Yeah. So I think, yeah, it's unfortunate, but it is where we are right now. Yeah. I mean, I'm always trying to figure out, is there some other structure that you can build around that to kind of reset people's expectations? Say, hey, listen, here's something to show your rational brain

that this actually works and that it doesn't work in a day, but it really does work. And give them, can you construct a process where there's enough short-term feedback that reinforces that belief and possibility for them to stay in the practice long enough for the bigger benefits to really take hold?

I think like you see a lot of diet programs structured this way. It's like, hey, it's the two week, you're going to lose 10 pounds in the first two weeks, almost to sort of convince yourself that, and you're not going to keep them off because it's all water weight, but to kind of trick your brain to think, oh, this could work. Maybe I'll stick with it longer term. I think those things very often can do as much harm as good. But is there sort of a superstructure that you can place on behavior change that just keeps people in it long enough? I got together with three other women from the program and we decided to email each other our gratitudes each day. Right. So I'm the person sometimes at 1159 PM. But what ended up happening was, well, two things that were just incredible. I would see the emails from them in my inbox,

which was a reminder that, Hey, you need to do your, you know, your gratitudes. But the other thing is I started to see, I got to know them so much better. I started to see the world through their eyes in this incredible and beautiful way. So some days when maybe I wasn't feeling as grateful as one can be, right, I would read their gratitudes and I would say, oh, yeah, that's actually an awesome thing, you know, because maybe we're in the same class and we had the same lecture that we, so I was grateful for that too, but I kind of forgot. So if anytime that we can get someone to be our walking buddy, or we can go to the gym with them, or we can engage in a gratitude practice around the dinner table, that can make all the difference. And sometimes if people are not participating, you can just do it around them and have an influence.

So Sean and I worked with this guy. He sold his company for $100 million. And you'd think he would just have a huge party that night, right? But it turned out actually 2 in the morning he had a nervous breakdown. Yeah. And so he – and it was a result of basically his personal life. He was overweight and out of shape. He was disconnected from his wife, thought she was going to divorce him.

And his two daughters didn't really have a relationship because he worked so hard on the business, right? And now the one thing that defined him was gone also. Yeah, exactly. And so his wife said to him at 2 in the morning, honey, I'm not divorcing you. And said, I'm going to take you out on a walk. So they went to the local high school down the street. They went walking around the track. And he said that she turned to him and just simple, but brilliant suggestion. Let's just talk about what we're grateful for. He said, because he was overweight, it was actually, it was hard to walk on the, around the track, but it was actually harder to come up with what he was

grateful for. But at the end of that experience, actually harder to come up with what he was grateful for. But at the end of that experience, he felt just a little bit better. And then the next night, she suggested the same thing. They did it. And so cut to two weeks later. They've done this every night, right? This is a ritual. And he says, I have an idea.

Let's force our daughters to do this with us. Let's bring this to the dinner table. You're laughing, right? Yeah, force. Great word there. So the five-year-old thought it was cute. The 13-year-old daughter said, and just rolled her eyes. She's not into it. And they said, okay, well, fine. We're going to start dinners this way. And if you guys want to participate, great. If not, not. Turns out two weeks after that, he gets a call from another dad at the school and he says, I've got to talk to you about what your daughter did the other night at the sleepover. And he's thinking, oh, geez, you know, boys, alcohol, both, what happened? And so he calls the dad back and he says, okay, what is it laying on me? And

he says, well, your daughter felt that like the girls were being mean, exceptionally mean at school. And so she got all of the girls of the sleepover to sit down in a circle and go around and say nice things about each other. Oh, wow. Cool, right? So it shows us that sometimes we start a positive habit, maybe with somebody or maybe just around somebody. And we have this incredible ripple effect and who knows how far it can go. Yeah. And even if you don't think people are watching or paying attention, I guess that's

where a lot of your work is headed these days also, sort of like how the states and the interactions we bring to the world transmit both explicitly, but also sort of like under the radar, but it all matters and it's all perceived and then passed on. Yeah. We're at the heart of our PBS show that we've just put out. It's this idea, you know, it's a pervasive idea. You can't change other people. Everyone always says it, you know, when you're talking about someone that's driving you nuts, right? You can't change other people, just work on yourself. But what our research shows is that you're changing people all the time. And it might not happen with those negative people on the time scale that you like, you

know, or whatever, but we're changing people all the time. And having that thought, you can't change other people, it's disempowering. It's also scientifically false. And so we look at ways to get other people to transform their mindset, to believe in their potential, to see that they can affect positive change. Ultimately though, it starts with us, right? It starts with the things that we do and how we interact with them. If we change our mindset about their potential, then that can help them change their own mindset as well. Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. I love that. I love that idea too. It feels like a good place to kind of come full circle here also.

So we're hanging out in the context of this conversation, and this is a good life project. So if I offer that phrase out to you, to live a good life, what comes up for you? What does it mean? These days, what it's evolved into meaning for me is to connect with the people around me. You know, I feel like I thrive in my life when I'm meaningfully connecting with them. So, you know, in my immediate circle, it's my husband, it's my two and a half year old, it's the people I work closely with.

I think when I can feel as if I can live in a more positive place, in a more empowered state, and then empower other people to take that, you know, that look, take on life, that's where I think I'm, I'm at my best. And that's, that's the good life. Thank you. 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. And then of course, if you're compelled, subscribe so that you can stay a part of this continuing experience. My greatest hope with this podcast is not just to produce moments and share stories and ideas that impact one person listening, but to let it create a conversation, Thank you so much, 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 gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how 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 8 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.