Good Life Project - On Awe, Positive Actions, Anxiety and Depression.

Episode Date: July 27, 2017

We spend so much of life racing from one goal, one task, one agenda item to the next, we end up missing so many opportunities to experience grace and awe.In today's Good Life Dispatch, we're talking about how a simple moment reconnected us with the power of awe. Be sure to listen to understand the picture in the show notes.And, in our Good Life Science segment, we're diving into some interesting new research on something called "positive activity interventions" and how they affect mood, anxiety and depression. As always, here's a link to the full study, for those who'd like to dive deeper.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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, hello, it's Jonathan. Excited to bring you today's Good Life Smorgasbord episode with a riff and a science update. And today's riff is inspired actually by a location that I'm in. We've been hanging out in Southern California for a small bit of the summer and it changed my location and actually exposed me to a moment of awe that I wouldn't actually is not possible on the east coast of the United States and I want to share that with you and also we'll be sharing a bit of kind of cool research on how something called positive activity interventions can make a real difference for those who may be experiencing certain levels of anxiety and or depression. So be sure to listen in because we're talking about awe and interventions for states of mind today.

I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. 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. 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 or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Hey there, it's Jonathan with this week's Good Life Project riff, a segment in our expanding Thursday shows. So as I sit here and record this, I'm on a white fluffy chair sitting by some French doors that are full glass that swing open and about a block and a half from me, I can actually in the back, I can hear just the slightest bit of ocean waves rolling in. And I am in Southern California, clearly not painting a picture of New York City, where we have decided to kind of relocate for a couple of weeks. still working, still building, still creating, but changing in geographic location because getting out of the city, creating a bit of novelty, reconnecting with nature and water is something that's really important to me. And as we were driving home last night,

it also reminded me that environment makes a really big difference, but so too do very particular types of moments make a really big difference in the way that we live our lives and the way that we feel. So last night is about sort of 8.30ish, and we're driving home after a long day of activities and kind of coming back to our little cottage by the water. And as I'm driving along, yesterday actually was one of the first days that we've been here where the skies remained very heavy and very gray the entire day. And it's kind of interesting because you can feel the sun on your back, but you also see complete grayness, which is a different experience than the way that we experience that level of cloud cover in New York. It must be a Southern California phenomenon. I know in June, they call that June gloom here. So we got a day of that yesterday, and it was a beautiful day,

but a gray day. And the whole day, the entire sky was completely blanketed with gray. And then as we moved into the evening, I started to notice that if you looked out over the water, way out over the horizon, you could see the edge of the gray. It was literally like there was a blanket of clouds that covered the entire world except far out over the edge of the water. When you looked way, way out, you saw the horizon of the water. And then you saw a little gap of light just sitting on top of the water. And then the full width of the horizon of the water, you saw the edge, the edge of this blanket of clouds, just kind of floating atop that little space where light was sneaking through. And you kind of knew that way, way, way far out there, the clouds ended and there was

light that was kind of poking its way through. And it was really beautiful. But then as we continued to drive along the coast, heading back to our little place, something really magical happened. So I kind of turned away. I went back onto a different street where I lost sight of the water. And as we're coming a little bit closer to our cottage, we start meandering through our tiny little neighborhood. I come up over a little bit of an elevation. And the place we're staying is a small town where we're not sort of at beach level. We're at cliff level,

at bluff level. So as I start to peek over at the bluff, I literally turn to my wife and I gasped. And what I see absolutely blows my mind because that space, that small horizontal sliver between the edge of the blanket of clouds and the horizon of water that went as far as the eye could see right and left, began to blaze amber. And it began to just pour its light across the edge of the horizon of water. And then, in that little space, you started to see the bottom of the sun drop out of the bottom of the blanket of clouds. And it was this magical,

huge glowing orb of orange. And then it drops lower and lower and lower until the entire space is lit up orange. And you just see this yellow or orange-amber glowing orb sitting between the space. It was like an eyeball, like between the space of the blanket of clouds and the edge of the horizon of the water and radiating light in all directions. And I was breathless, absolutely breathless. I turned to my wife, I said, are you seeing were about a block from home, and I literally floored it back to our place, ran into our cottage, and I knew the sun was moving quickly, grabbed my camera and ran back out just to try and take a couple of shots. But I didn't want to spend too much time doing that, because I didn't want to be an observer in the process of observing the sun. I wanted to just sit there and see it. It was magical. The sun on the west coast of the United States sets over the ocean. So I'm an east coaster. So I'm used to the sun coming up and not seeing the

sun coming up and also not seeing it go down over a clear horizon because it always rises and falls over buildings. So when you're on the West Coast and you're on the water and you have one of these magical days and the way that thing set up was just absolutely stunning and I wanted to just breathe it in. And when you pause and just drink in moments like that, when you stop long enough to see and feel and experience him, it creates this sensation of awe in you. And there's actually a tremendous amount of growing research on the experience of awe now, and how it rewires your relationship with both yourself and with the world. And it also changes your psychology and physiology. And it reminded me in this moment, this magical moment that literally was over in a matter of seconds,

that we all need moments like this, that we tend to be so heads down, trying to accomplish the things that matter in life, trying to dig into our metrics for success. But when we do that, so often we eliminate our awareness. We stop seeing these moments that are very likely around us every single day to experience awe, whether it's natural-made awe, whether it's awe that we create ourselves. And it really moves the difference in our lives. And it reconnected me with this sense of the impact of awe and a yearning to find ways to bring more of it into my life, or maybe more accurately, to recommit to seeing the

awe that already exists in so many moments in my life. So I just want to share that moment with you. If you are curious to see what I saw, by the way, I was able to snap a couple of pictures before we entirely lost the sun when the sun was starting to sort of melt its way into the horizon of the ocean. It absolutely does not even do the slightest bit of justice to the truth of what I experienced visually. But you can get even like a 1% taste of what I saw. I'll include an image, one of the images that I took in the show notes, and you can check that out on the website if you're interested in actually seeing the smallest representation of what I saw, that moment of awe for me. And I would definitely encourage you to

start to open your eyes to the awe that exists in your life on a daily basis, and then find those moments on a larger scale whenever you can. They're difference makers. They were for me. So, as always, I hope you found that quote awe-inspiring. Maybe not my riff, but the idea behind it. And I will be back with you in just a moment with today's Good Life Science Update, which you will not want to miss, because we're talking about a cool new study, which speaks to how some very simple, seemingly innocuous things that you might do can actually make a really big difference in state of mind, and also if you're experiencing anxiety or depression.

They can move the needle. So, back with you with a science update after the break. 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 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. So our awesome friends at FreshBooks 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. So let's dive into today's Good Life Science update. And it's kind of fortuitous because the study that I wanted to share a bit about with you actually came out of University of California, San Diego, also sponsored in part by the National Institute of Health. And I happen to be recording this right now, sitting in a small cottage in a beach town in what's known as North County,

just north of San Diego. And I'm kind of in the process of doing what the study suggests doing. So here's the deal. There's been a lot of research over the years over, you know, sort of what works, what helps people deal with anxiety and depression. And a lot of the early work, especially the early work in the field of psychology was around what can we do? How can we address negative thinking and negative symptomology? And what can we do to try and bring people from being in a negative space or quote sick or quote ill space back to baseline meaning not that they were flourishing and doing well but they just weren't in that pained state anymore you know 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 walberg you know what the difference between me and you you're gonna die don't shoot if we need them y'all need a pilot flight risk Tell me how to fly this thing. 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. 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- 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 or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. So there's been a huge amount of research. And then a couple of decades ago, the field of, quote, positive psychology kind of comes along and turns that on its head when Martin Seligman heads up the American Psychological Association and in his opening speech says,

we have a cake half-baked, it's time to bake the other half. And what he was talking about there was going from sort of baseline to truly flourishing in the world. So there's been a ton of research done on this. And there's been a lot of research and a lot of talk on self-talk and sort of changing thought patterns as a way to help move from baseline to flourishing. This sort of latest bit of research I thought was really interesting. It's by Charles Taylor and Sonia Lubomirsky and Murray Stein, and you probably recognize some of those names. There's some sort of leading voices in the world of positive psychology.

What they did was they said they want to look at what they call positive activity interventions for anxiety and depression. And what they really realized was that, you know, what would happen if we blended a bunch of these small interventions? So it's less about, okay, thinking differently or processing past trauma. It's more about what if we took a series of simple actions, very often, very simple actions, and we did that consistently over a window of time? Would that have a substantial effect on those who might be experiencing some levels of anxiety and depression? So the way that this particular study was set up was close to 30, actually I think 29 exactly, people who were, quote, treatment-seeking individuals.

And they presented with clinical symptoms of anxiety and or depression. And about half of those were put on a wait list, and half of those were recommended to do these specific, these positive activity interventions. And these include things like gratitude journaling. These include things like just doing simple acts of daily kindness and things that reinforce positive states of mind. So again, it's not thinking about things. These are actual simple actions that you take, which aren't necessarily telling yourself, I feel less anxious or processing anxiety or processing depression. They're simply acts that you take that have an impact. So in this study, folks were examined of this initial group of 29 people.

They were examined to get a clinical diagnosis, both pre-treatment and post-treatment. They were checked again about 90 days after and a full six months after the experiment. What was being measured was what's known as positive and negative affect, the symptoms of anxiety, depression, and overall psychological well-being. So what were the results? Because a lot of people, when you tell them, well, journal on gratitude or do simple acts of kindness, things like this, they kind of roll their eyes. They're like, well, you know, like, that's all nice for, like, the pop psychology, you know, like, fluffy, you know, you know, like, this, this, just satisfy yourself by not having to do any real work group. So the results of this study showed that these positive activity interventions caused a really big improvement in what's known as affect, meaning state of mind, mood, anxiety, and depression, and psychological well-being. The difference between the pre-treatment and the post-treatment at both three months and six months was very substantial,

especially compared to the waitlist group, which was sort of the group that was kind of used as a control, which really didn't get any kind of treatment at all. In fact, the interventions were so effective that in the post-treatment follow-ups and the assessments, the groups who had or the individuals who had this intervention had states of mind that were pretty comparable to pretty much everyone else who did not have any sort of clinical diagnosis of anxiety or depression, which is really, really substantial, especially because this was actually a very relatively short protocol. This was a 10-session protocol. And what they realized is that even at three months and six months after a simple 10-session protocol of very simple positive activity interventions, there was a

very substantial and lasting difference in state of mind. It also really reduced a lot of the negative effects, the anxiety and depression, and it increased well-being and flourishing, again, compared to the waitlist group, which was the control. So what do we get from this? What we get from it is that there's an increasing body of research that's coming largely out of the field of positive psychology that keeps validating and reinforcing the fact that they're very simple actions that can be taken on a consistent basis daily, that when you blend them together, these tiny things, which are seemingly innocuous, and you couldn't imagine how they'd make a real difference in your state of mind and your life, your experience and your ability to have a sense of well-being and

flourishing. They make a real difference and they make a real difference in anybody's lives. They can just make everything better. And this latest data point shows that in the context of clinical anxiety and depression, they can also make a real difference. Now, again, I am not a psychiatrist and a psychologist. As with all of these good life science updates, there's always the precaution that if you are experiencing anxiety and depression on a level where it is really impairing your ability to flourish and be happy and live your life, please do seek out qualified professional help. But when I talk about studies like this, it's sort of this piling mountain of information

that says there are things we can all do that can make a real substantial difference, whether we are living with some level of anxiety and depression, diagnosed or undiagnosed, or whether we simply want to increase the experience of well-being and flourishing in our lives. So I hope you found that interesting. As always, I'm constantly on the hunt for interesting new research. We will link to the actual science report, as we always do in these science updates, for those who want to go further into the actual clinical report, as we always do in these science updates for those who want to go further into the actual clinical report and the methodologies can find that and do so. And I'm excited to be back with you. 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. Today's show is sponsored by FreshBooks, which is a super cool cloud accounting software. To claim your month-long unrestricted free trial with no credit card required, go to FreshBooks.com slash good life and enter the Good Life Project in the How Did You Hear About Us section. 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 life, 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, 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. 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.