Something You Should Know - 3 Things to Fix Your Life & Finding Awe Everyday

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Starting point is 00:00:27 Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know. Ever think your cell phone is vibrating or ringing when it really isn't? I'll tell you why that happens. Then, how to stop worrying, be more confident, and make more friends. You can actually put hours on it. So 50 hours of time between you and another person is what it takes to make a casual acquaintance. And it takes about 90 hours for you to start thinking of someone as a friend.

Starting point is 00:00:58 Also some important truths and myths about honeybees and what they think of us, and the benefits of seeking out awe and wonder in the world and understanding what awe really is. When you get goosebumps, when something, you know, knocks your socks off, you ask why is it important to find awe, look for awe, because it can make us happier, and other studies have showed it can make us healthier. All this today on Something You Should Know. This is an ad for BetterHelp.

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Starting point is 00:01:55 Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more. That's BetterHelp.com. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, and welcome to Something You Should Know,

Starting point is 00:02:18 where it is springtime here where I live in California, and the spring of 2024 has been a particularly wet one, so everything is green and colorful and lovely. I am glad you're here, and we start today with something, I don't know if this has happened to you, but it's happened to me several times where I think my phone is vibrating in my pocket. I can feel it vibrating in my pocket, only to pull it out and look at it and realize that it wasn't vibrating at all. Supposedly, it's happened to about 80% of people who have cell phones. And 30% of people who have cell phones, at least in one survey, say they've actually heard

Starting point is 00:03:00 their phone ring when it wasn't ringing at all. It was totally a phantom ring. So why does this happen? Well, according to an article on the BBC website, it's a little complicated, but when you have your cell phone handy, you basically put yourself on kind of an unconscious alert that it could go off at any time. And since you know it could go off at any time, and you are on alert that it could go off any time, you're prone to false alarms. Perhaps your sensitivity is just set a little too high. It's likely because you hate missing a call or a text,

Starting point is 00:03:40 so you're hypersensitive so you don't miss one. And therefore you're prone to false alarms. And that is something you should know. Human beings worry too much. We know that to be true because, well, when you look back at your own life, you can see that you've worried about a lot of things that really weren't worth worrying about. And we also know from research, older people in their final years often state that they regret having spent so much of their life worrying over things they shouldn't have. Another common human problem

Starting point is 00:04:18 is lack of confidence. How many of us wish we had more of it? And of course, humans are social creatures. We need friends. Yet today, people have fewer friends than in previous generations. So what do we do about all of this? Well, there's some interesting and important research that offers some very practical and effective strategies to help us all stop worrying, be more confident, and make more and better friends. And here to discuss this is Helen Thompson. She's a freelance writer and consultant who really dove into the research on this, and she has authored a book about it called This Book Could Fix Your Life.

Starting point is 00:04:59 Hi, Helen. Welcome. Hi. Thank you for having me. So these are three pretty universal problems people have of worrying too much, not having enough confidence, and wanting more and better friends. And so let's start with worry. What is worry? The best way to think about worry is really, basically, it's uncertainty, right? So our brain is this one big prediction machine and it doesn't like not knowing. So we don't not knowing is not nice. So we all have this certain intolerance to uncertainty. And we hate not knowing whether something's how something's going to turn out, which is kind of why we've all probably experienced a lot of worry in the last year.

Starting point is 00:05:43 And where we sit on that continuum actually affects how we react to stresses in our life. So someone who's really intolerant of uncertainty might stress really badly and might worry a lot when their partner is 10 minutes late home, say, and they will start thinking the worst and they'll think they've been in a traffic accident or something. Whereas someone who's quite tolerant to uncertainty would immediately assume that they were in traffic and they wouldn't stress them out at all and they wouldn't think twice and so you can see how there could be a big difference between somebody's reaction to that same situation so if you're someone who is less tolerant of uncertainty you probably have quite a few safety behaviours, they're called. So you might ring your

Starting point is 00:06:26 children every half an hour if they're out at a friend's house to check they're okay, say. Or if you're some, like me, you might be telling them all the time, be careful, be careful, be careful. And these are safety behaviours. And basically what you're trying to do is control the situation, is to try and prevent a negative situation from happening when you don't know what's going to happen. And, you know, to some extent, safety behaviors are good. You know, we want to protect our children. But too many safety behaviors, paradoxically, are actually make our general stress levels much, much worse because we never get the chance to see that bad things generally don't happen. if they do happen we can actually

Starting point is 00:07:05 cope with them really well most of the time and they're never really as bad as we think they're going to be. So in terms of uncertainty and worrying about the future one way to help yourself is to identify these safety behaviors which is actually quite a tricky thing to do and then what a therapist would tell you is to try and let them play the situation play out in a safe way so if you're worried about your children and where they might be you instead of phoning them every half an hour maybe the next time you only phone them every hour and then the next time you maybe only phone them once or twice and then or send them a text and then you basically gradually lessen your safety behaviors until you get to a point where you see that you don't need to

Starting point is 00:07:51 implement them anymore and studies show that people who who do this generally experience less worry more generally in their life yeah i guess it makes sense that if you stop the behaviors revolving around worry, you might worry less. Yeah, and it has a kind of generalization as well. So if you identify specific safety behaviors that are for specific events, you actually find a more general, a general increase in well-being and less anxiety overall in other situations as well. It is interesting that, you know, we worry about the future, that we don't like uncertainty, but what we worry about are the negative things. We never stop and think about, well, when I win the lottery or when I, you know, it's always

Starting point is 00:08:37 negative. It's always what horrible thing could happen rather than what wonderful thing could happen. It's about reframing, I think, a lot of the time. It's about thinking about how somebody else might view that event. That often helps, actually. There's a couple of studies that show that actually talking to other people about how much worry they have about a specific event, say it's your partner being late home, for instance, can actually help you reframe your own worries and anxiety over that situation. So it all kind of adds up to, you know, talking about our worries really helps us kind of dissolve them. But is there a personality trait? I mean, it just does seem that some people are more worriers than others, and that it just seems to be part of who they are.

Starting point is 00:09:29 Yeah, there's certainly an aspect of personality involved, and there will be genetic predispositions to having anxiety and worries. But again, everybody is able to change their personality, which sounds funny because for many, many decades, it was thought that your personality was set in stone. But in fact, it turns out that people's personality when graded, when they're, say, 30 and then when they're graded again, when they're 70, can have completely different types of personality, which just kind of should give you the motivation to think about what aspects you might want to tweak here and there. Anything else about worry that you found in the research that you found really interesting or that you think people need to understand better? Something that I wasn't aware of was that cognitive behavioral therapy is a well-known treatment for for anxiety and obviously it's something that is only available to people who have a therapist accessible to them or who can afford a therapist and what I

Starting point is 00:10:32 discovered in the research was that there are a lot now a lot of apps now that offer cognitive behavioral therapy and when they were tested side by side so half a group of people went and had face-to-face therapy and the other half had cognitive behavioral therapy through an app. They found that there was actually hardly any difference between the positive outcomes and their mental well-being and the decrease in anxiety. So I think that's really important to know that you don't need to see a therapist, you don't need drugs necessarily from a doctor. There are solutions that you can use to help minimize your worries and your anxieties just from your own home, from your mobile phone. I know another topic that you looked into was confidence. And so

Starting point is 00:11:15 what did you find in the research about acquiring more self-confidence? I think one of the fun parts is, the fun findings is that it's about music because music's really well researched and its links to confidence are well supported by a lot of evidence and when we listen to music scientists call it arousal which is the state in which the body and the brain are more alert and your emotions are intensified. And music can trigger this feeling of confidence in us because of what music is linked to in our brain. So you might hear a certain type of music at an Olympic event, say, or a really great party. And those links are permanently forged in your brain so that the next time you hear that music, you'll feel the same sort of emotions. So I think this is a really nice way of being able to boost our confidence and there's this

Starting point is 00:12:09 really fun study that looked at it asked undergraduates in Hong Kong to vote on what they thought was the ultimate music booster for confidence and they discussed they found that it was uh we will rock you by queen and uh get For This by 2 Unlimited and In The Club by 50 Cent. They were the three songs that were the most empowering they found in this study. So I quite like listening to those, you know, just before an interview or, you know, before something where I, you know, talk or a presentation. What is confidence? Confidence, I think, is a quite mysterious emotion, behavior. It's not completely well understood about what actually happens in the brain when we're feeling confidence, but we actually do have neurons,

Starting point is 00:13:00 specific cells in the brain that appear to fire when we feel confident. So we can pinpoint it down to specific cells and their action in the brain. But I guess psychologists would call it something different. They would talk about a belief in yourself, a feeling. It's a real positive emotion. But it's very hard to define. Well, it's interesting that people talk about, well, he's a confident guy, but I feel confidence sometimes, but other times, other situations, I'm not confident at all that it's very situational. Yeah, of course. And obviously,

Starting point is 00:13:44 the more we do things, the more we practice things, the more comfortable we feel in situations, the more confident we feel in situations. But there are ways of tweaking our confidence when we are feeling less confident. One of the ways I really love is because there's this confidence gap between genders and pretty well anecdotally and scientifically talked about women feel less confident than men or appear less confident than men. And there's some evidence to suggest that, yes, there is some aspects of women who do feel less confident than men in certain situations, but it's not all down to how confident they feel. And there's a lot of biases that women encounter in the workplace that affect confidence.

Starting point is 00:14:27 So, for instance, there's a lot of studies that show that confidence translates into rewards only when women combine it with empathy and altruism and other pro-social traits. these extra characteristics as a woman you'll see negatively but men seem to be able to toot their trumpet um without those other characteristics and not be chastised for it so there's this this gender confidence gap that we we have to overcome as women so um there's this one study that i really love and it showed that a psychologist um recruited about i think it was about 150 male and female students to give a speech in front of a virtual audience and they found that men spoke for longer which is this standard indication of having more confidence and they were rated more highly by an independent panel and that in itself is not surprising that's what we often find but then when, the psychologist tweaked the some things for some participants by putting a photo of either Hillary Clinton, Angela Merkel or Bill Clinton in the back of the powerful women talked for significantly longer and were then rated more highly in the quality of their presentation by the independent panel.

Starting point is 00:15:52 So although it's not clear exactly why that phenomenon occurs and why it works, but it does argue for a very easy way of increasing female confidence by essentially having more role models, female role models, generally in society and in your workplace and in your personal life. And, you know, particularly important perhaps to have those role models visible to you when you need that confidence boost. We're talking about confidence and worry and friendship. And we're talking with Helen Thompson, author of the book, This Book Could Fix Your Life. This episode is brought to you by Melissa and Doug. Wooden puzzles and building toys for problem solving and arts and crafts for creative thinking. Melissa and Doug makes toys that help kids take on the world

Starting point is 00:16:43 because the way they play today shapes who they become tomorrow. Melissa and Doug, the play is pretend, the skills are real. Look for Melissa and Doug wherever you shop for toys. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there. All Porter fares include beer, wine, and snacks, and free fast-streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats. And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather. Visit flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy. So Helen, I've heard, I'm sure other

Starting point is 00:17:28 people have heard that when it comes to self-confidence, it's good to fake it till you make it. That if you act confident, even if you're not feeling confident, if you act that way, your confidence will catch up. Is that true? Is there a science to support that? Yeah, I mean, it's a bit mixed, actually. But there's this idea that body language can really help with confidence. And there's a big history of studies behind this, some of which haven't been able to be repeated. But there was a lot of talk about the power pose about a decade or so, maybe two decades ago now, where there were a lot of studies that looked at how you place yourself in a confident pose and actually that makes you feel more confident so your confident pose is your legs a little bit further apart than they then you would

Starting point is 00:18:15 normally comfortably stand and you have open shoulders and your arms maybe at your sides um and that's a little bit like animals act when they are confident, when they want to show confidence to another animal. And there is a lot of studies that show that if you do that, you actually come across as more confident, you're more successful, you're more likely to be invited to a second interview, say. But then a lot of those studies actually had a lot of problems with them when our statistical techniques became a little bit better there was we found that they weren't in fact significant anymore and and the studies couldn't be repeated as I said but since then we

Starting point is 00:18:56 have had a few more studies that do seem to suggest that there is this way of actually positioning yourself say before an interview in this very broad shouldered square what legs what um legs far apart sort of stance which can if you compare people who do that with people who put themselves in a really weak position so hunched over your head down arms crossed just before you go into an interview. Those that are more likely to be hired were those who had done the power poses, even though the interviewer hadn't didn't know, you know, which person had done which pose beforehand. So there is there is a little bit of evidence that, you know, faking it till you you make it works. Well, it also seems that other things affect your confidence. I mean, there are some days where everything seems to be going wrong, and I don't feel very confident about anything.

Starting point is 00:19:50 And other days when I'm on top of the world because things are going well, and that it's not a vacuum, that everything affects your level of confidence. Yeah, sure. I mean, the environment you're in, I mean, it's a similar concept to the music, why music, you know, puts you into the state of arousal and other things in your world can do that. You know, if you've just had a really great conversation with a friend, or you've just had some really good news, you've all got this state of arousal in your brain and your hormones, positive hormones, feel good hormones that are going to help you feel confident in another situation. And likewise, if you've had the opposite kind of day, if you're feeling lonely,

Starting point is 00:20:31 or if you've had bad news, or, you know, your general mental well-being is not great, then that's definitely going to affect your confidence. Sure. Yeah, right. Because, I mean, you may feel on top of the world and you're about to give a speech and just before then you find out that you've been fired. Well, you know, that's how they go really well. And that's why it's really important to have these kind of little tips and these little tools that you can use that, you know, might not make a massive difference on their own. But if you put them all together, you know, they could be the difference between getting a job or not getting the job. And have we talked about all the good ones? So there is one more. You can put pen to paper, essentially. If you write down various things that you've done that have made you feel confident or powerful in the past,

Starting point is 00:21:18 just before a presentation or an interview or whatever situation it is that you want to feel confident in, you're more likely to come across as confident. And so the way they tested this was to invite people in for interviews and they got half the group to write down, just for five minutes before the interview, write down a whole list of things about times in which they felt confident and powerful. And then they got another section of people to write down times where they felt really unconfident and powerful and then they got another section of people to write down times where they felt really unconfident and and and weak and and unhappy and then they got another group of people to not write down anything and they invited all these people into interviews and they had an independent panel who didn't know what group they were interviewing and the people

Starting point is 00:22:00 who had written down their confident experiences were more likely to get jobs. So it just shows that you're just giving yourself little things you can do to give yourself that little boost that can just make you come across as more confident. And obviously, there's clothing as well, which I think is a really, really obvious one. But that has also been tested scientifically that if you are wearing clothes that make you feel confident, you will come across as more confident as well. And is that subjective? Or are there clothes that make you feel confident, you will come across as more confident as well. And is that subjective or are there clothes that make almost anybody feel confident? That's a really good question, but I'm not sure that the studies seem to, for instance, one study looked at women who wore, they wore their favorite blouse or they wore a

Starting point is 00:22:41 lab coat and then they were told to make a neutral expression and they had their photo taken and the photos you couldn't see their clothing you could just see their faces and then another panel of independent onlookers rated all of the women to say which they thought looked the most confident and it basically showed that when the women were wearing their favorite item of clothing, they were rated as looking more confident, even though you couldn't, the raters couldn't actually see the clothing. And then women were told to make a neutral expression in both, in all the pictures. And now let's talk about making friends? Because I think, especially as we get older, you know, making friends when you're a kid seems to be a lot easier because you're at school, you're doing things with other kids, and it's easier to make friends. It becomes more difficult as you get older. And, you know,

Starting point is 00:23:36 there's no like magic way to do it. It's all very happenstance and situational and you bump into people or meet through someone else. But so what about that? What's a good way, a more deliberate way to find friendship? Well, I think firstly, you have to think about how long it takes to make a friend. Because I think people underestimate this. And this has been studied. It takes time. So you can actually put hours on it so 50 hours of time between you and another person um is what it takes to to make a casual what you'd call a casual acquaintance and um it takes about 90 hours for you to start thinking of someone as a friend and it takes about

Starting point is 00:24:20 200 hours spent together to think of someone as your closest friend. So if you think about how many hours we actually spend with people, sort of an hour here or there, you shouldn't try to rush that process or think that you can find a friend overnight. But there are also considerations of how many friends we need. And we know that it's really important to have social ties. It's amazingly important for our physical and mental health. And's really important to have social ties it's it's amazingly important for our physical and mental health and I mean to the extent where studies show that people with weak social relationships with with less friends are about 50 percent more likely to die in a given time frame than those who have strong social ties and and and good quality friendships so

Starting point is 00:25:01 we know it's really important um and so in terms of making new friends I think it's important to think about well how many friends do we need and um generally the the research suggests that it's good to have around five intimate relationships so maybe not as many as you think and and most of us have about 15 closer friends and family and about 50 sort of next level friends that you might invite to a party. But it's really those five closest powers that's important. And apparently the best way to maintain those friendships is to see or speak to those people every other day. And that seems to be the kind of ideal amount of time and investment that you have to make to keep hold of those closest relationships to us.

Starting point is 00:25:54 And where do those people tend to come from? Well, I think if you're looking at making friends, then if you're in a new city as an adult, like you say, it's really hard to make friends as an adult. But actually, a lot of the research looks at people who are trying to date, you know, who are trying to meet a boyfriend or a girlfriend. And it just shows some little tips like when you first meet people, make sure you look them in the eye. You know, this increases trustworthiness between people. Don't do it too much because it makes people freak out and it's

Starting point is 00:26:34 a bit intense. But, you know, there's lots of eye contact. You want to ask lots of questions. That's really important, particularly on first encounters, because studies show that the amount of questions you ask about the other person predicts how likely that person is going to be to want to see you again. So that's really important. I don't know if you looked at this, but what is the state of affairs with friendship in terms of how it relates to loneliness and how big a problem that is? And are people having more friendships or fewer friendships? Or where are we with that? Yeah, there does seem to be a few studies that suggest that loneliness has increased in recent years. And I think one of the surprising things I found out about loneliness was that

Starting point is 00:27:20 one of the best ways to help stop somebody from feeling lonely is actually by getting them to go and help others. So rather than trying to go out and help yourself, actually going and working in, say, a super kitchen, doing something that's actually helping somebody else is what seemed to be one of the best ways of actually getting somebody out of the cycle of loneliness and improving their mental health. Well, I wish we could talk longer about this because these are all things that I think people struggle with at different times in life, worry, friendship, confidence, and it's good to get, it's good to get the research behind what, what works and how to make things better. Helen Thompson has been my guest. The name of her book is This Book Could Fix Your Life.

Starting point is 00:28:02 And you will find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, Helen. Appreciate you being here. Thank you. It's been a real pleasure. Metrolinks and Crosslinks are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals, be careful along our tracks, and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives,

Starting point is 00:28:49 and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the

Starting point is 00:29:31 type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. It's hard to go through the day without hearing someone use some form of the word awe, as in, that is so awesome. Dude, that YouTube video is so awesome. And maybe it's awesome, or maybe the word just gets overused a lot. True awe, like when you see the Grand Canyon for the first time, or when you see your child for the first time after he or she is born, that's real awe. And that sensation or feeling or whatever awe is, is a real thing that offers interesting benefits to humans.

Starting point is 00:30:27 And Alan Klein is someone who has studied and written about it. Alan is a speaker and author of over 30 books, one of which is called The Awe Factor. Hey, Alan, welcome to Something You Should Know. So what is awe? How do you, what's your definition? When you have a wow experience, when you get goosebumps, when something, you know, knocks your socks off. To me, that's an awe experience. And I can't imagine going too far in life without having one of those experiences. But do we know what that experience is? I mean, what's going on that we feel that sense that thing? What is it? Interesting you ask that question because

Starting point is 00:31:12 what the researchers are finding, and this is only in the last eight to ten years, because it's very hard to define. It's an emotion. But other than saying it's an emotion, everyone experiences on a different way. What you might think is something that, say, knocks your socks off. I may go, that's not so great. Like like my mom took her first flight when she was 83. And I met her at the plane and she got off and I said, Ma, how did you like the flight? And she went, oh, that was incredible. You could see the tops of the clouds. That was an all moment for her. For me, who's traveled over 100,000 miles a year, it's not so much of an all moment seeing the tops of the clouds. So it's hard to describe. It's very individual. And some things are more common, like seeing the number two generator of awe is looking

Starting point is 00:32:13 at young babies or childbirth. Most of us are touched by that. So there are some commonalities or being at the Grand Canyon, most of us go, ah, oh my God, when you see stuff like that. So that's pretty common. But there are other things that maybe is not so common that each individual would find to be an awe moment. Well, it does seem that awe moments are singular in the sense that how many times are you going to look at the Grand Canyon and be awestruck? I mean, the first time, yes. The second time, maybe. The third time, yeah, I saw this yesterday. Yeah, but you know what research is finding that, and I think it's probably true with your example. So nature is the number one generator of awe. So if you see

Starting point is 00:33:06 something that, you know, really awed you and you take a photo, if you look at that photo later on, you know, days, months, years later, researchers saying that you will get some of that same awe feeling that you got when you first saw that. Now, maybe it's not the same level, but still it brings back some of that same high moment that you had when you first experienced it, even just looking at a photo or even just writing about that experience. One of my favorite experiences with awe was many years ago in Long Beach, California, where the Queen Mary, the original Queen Mary ship sits. And for many years next to it in a big dome was Howard Hughes' wooden airplane, the Spruce Goose. And it was a tourist attraction.

Starting point is 00:34:03 People would come and see it. And the way you would enter to see it is you would step from behind a wall and there, taking up your entire field of vision, was this airplane. And if you had never seen it before, this thing was so big. I mean, the wingspan is 320 feet. It's a football field. The wingspan is the size of a football field. So I stood there next to this wall and watched as people came around the wall and saw this thing. And almost to a person, people would stop and,

Starting point is 00:34:40 oh my God! There would be that moment of awe. And you could just see it time after time person after person it was incredible and you and you just gave another definition of awe is when you see something and you go oh my god you know and it's it's hard to explain sometimes why you have that feeling, but it's like maybe something you've never seen before, something you can't really explain, that how did that happen? For instance, I was hiking up in Yosemite, hiking up to Vernal Falls, and I'm going up a path. There's a path going down nearby, and somebody stops and yells across, Alan? And I look at them, and I don't recognize them, and they tell me,

Starting point is 00:35:35 I was your apprentice. I used to be a scenic designer. And they said, I was an apprentice of yours 40 years ago in summer stock. Now, what are the chances, Mike, of us meeting on this top of this mountain? You know, had I turned a different way or had he delayed a bit and I was further up the path? I mean, it's just that one moment. People call it synchronicity, but I think it's more than that. When moments like that happen, those are all moments that things just connect in an instant. And you go, how did that possibly happen?

Starting point is 00:36:16 That's an all moment. And so everybody, as I said, everybody probably has had these moments in their life and so the the issue now is for the purposes of this conversation so what i mean so everybody has them but what does the science say what do we do with this what what what is it doing for us well the the reason it's important to to start noticing your awe moments is give you give you one scientific research came out last September in emotions journal and they took 56 people these are mostly older people 60 70 80 they divided them into two groups they told both groups what we want you to do in this experiment is to go out

Starting point is 00:37:08 once a week, 15 minutes, take a walk for 15 minutes, and do this for eight weeks. So both groups were told the same thing, except one group was told something a little extra. They were told when they go out on their walk to look for something that awed them, that they found wandering. And just notice how they were feeling. Maybe even take a photo of themselves, actually, of what awed them. And then after eight weeks, they interviewed both groups. And the negative group, or the group, not the negative group, but the group that was just told to go take a walk, they said things like, you know, I'm going on a trip soon and I haven't packed and I don't have my ticket and I'm really worried about that. They consistently found that those people said they were thinking about other things, things they were concerned or worried about. The other group that was told to find some awe, they said that they had less negative emotions. They found that they had more positive emotions. They found that they were less

Starting point is 00:38:19 upset and that they were happier. And Mike, this was just a once a week, 15 minute walk, and they did it just eight times. So you asked why is it important to find awe, look for awe, have that intention of finding awe, because it can make us happier. And other studies have showed it can make us healthier. So how would that happen? I mean, how can finding awe make you healthier? Well, one study, it showed that it reduces inflammation. I don't have the exact details of how they studied that. It seems amazing.

Starting point is 00:38:59 And so what do you conclude from that? I mean, one assumption I would think you could make is that when you're focused on finding wonder and awe in something, well, then you're not worried about other things. You're not worried about packing for your trip or worried about what's going to happen tomorrow. You're focused on the moment. You're being very mindful. And by doing that, that that reduces your stress and makes you healthier. Right.

Starting point is 00:39:29 Finding awe is being more mindful. And one of the things I realized, once we set our intention in anything, we're moving towards that direction. So another example, I took a class a couple of years ago where we were given an intention every day to do something. And one day it was to go out and find things in the shape of hearts. And I took my dog for a walk and I came back and I looked at the morning glories that I was growing around my gate in the front of the house. And every single leaf was heart-shaped. Now I had been walking in and out walking my dog three times a day I had not noticed that until I had that intention. So finding you know putting your intention as if like those

Starting point is 00:40:20 people on the experiment once they had that intention, they found it, and they said they were happier. And they were happier how, and for how long, and how much happier? They said they focused less on negative emotions. And the other thing they found, and other studies have found this too about awe and wonder, is that it helps us connect with other people. Interesting study done with Cirque du Soleil by a researcher named Beau Lotto, L-O-T-T-O. And they took an audience watching Cirque du Soleil and they examined them before, during, and after the show.

Starting point is 00:41:06 And what they found was that people experience awe and wonder, and anyone who's seen Cirque du Soleil knows that. But they found that people, one of the things they found is that people said they connected closer with others. It helped them connect to other people. So is it just that we're sharing this experience together? I mean, how does watching Cirque du Soleil help you become closer to other people? You mean the people they're with watching it together, and we're sharing this awe-inspiring experience of Cirque du Soleil, so that brings us together.

Starting point is 00:41:52 It really, it's like when we all, when we saw something happen that was so amazing to us, we're all going, oh, you know, we're all going, oh my God, you know, how could they do that? Because we're sharing the experience together. Exactly, Okay. Exactly. It does seem that children are more awestruck than adults. And then there are those adults, those kind of curmudgeony old adults where nothing seems to, awe doesn't seem to be in their repertoire. Everything is like, I was thinking of the spruce goose thing. If they walked in, they'd go, oh, yeah, it's a plane. You know, yeah. Right.

Starting point is 00:42:27 Yeah, it's a plane. It's a plane that the wingspan is the size of a football field. But yeah, it's a plane. Well, people like that. And, you know. But that's a choice, right? I mean, you can choose to live your life looking for all the wonder in the world, or you can choose to just not care and just not look.

Starting point is 00:42:53 And who cares how big the plane is? And, you know, the Grand Canyon is nice, but, you know, it's just a hole in the ground. And so, you know, that's a choice to look at it one way or look at it the other way. Right. Well, Einstein once said that, and I'm paraphrasing here, but he said something like, you can live your life as if nothing is a miracle or you can live your life as everything is a miracle. And I mean, just think of your own body, what a miracle that is, and how, you know, one breath keeps us alive. You stop just one breath, and you're gone. Is that not a miracle? Yeah, well, I would think so. Yeah. How is it not a miracle?

Starting point is 00:43:43 So you're right. Some people, no matter what it is, are not going to see the awe, the wonder, the miracle that we all are, that surrounds us all the time. And yet that look on a child's face when they see a magic trick or they see something that they've never seen before that truly is awe-inspiring, that look, watching their face, I mean, that's awe-inspiring. Right, yeah. And as I said, the second generative awe is childbirth and watching young children. They're just amazing. Sometimes just their face. Look at pictures of babies' faces, the big eyes and the

Starting point is 00:44:26 big smile. It truly is amazing. So boil this all down into a message. Is the prescription to be more open to finding wonder in the world and that that is good for you? Well, yeah, I think it's to be more open, that realize that it's all around us. I mean, if you think you don't have a lot of awe in your life, look at a flower and then look closer. I think one of the prescriptive things is to, you know, we don't stop, we don't look closer. Look inside a tulip, the shapes, the colors, sometimes the fragrance. So just prescriptive is stop. Stop for a moment and look around. Take a raisin, for instance, and just look at the shape and the texture and realize that there's no other raisin in the world probably exactly like that raisin. So everything, or just

Starting point is 00:45:27 stop and realize what it took for the broccoli to get to your plate. That whole process of somebody planting the seed, or just the fact that this little seed can produce this edible broccoli that somebody had to plant and water and nurture and the sun had to nourish and it had to go on a truck to your store where somebody wrapped it and checked you out and you brought it home, you had to cook it and there it is. We just take so much for granted when if we really stop and look and think and as you said, be more mindful of everything around us. I think that's a prescription to find the awe that is there. You know, we were talking at the beginning about how, you know, people are in awe often when they see something they've never seen before. And the more you see it, maybe the less awe you're in.

Starting point is 00:46:27 But the one thing that always inspires awe in me is when I look up at the night sky on a dark night and I see all those stars and see this little corner of the universe that we're part of, every single time I'm in awe of that. I can't even get my head around it. Right. And how many times have you seen it? All the time. All the time.

Starting point is 00:46:53 So, and it didn't stop you from going about your business, but you took a moment or five minutes to be in awe. Well, I made a very conscious decision many years ago to try not to lose that childlike wonder of the world. And I've tried to live my life that way to always try to be on the lookout for stuff like that. But I'm not always successful because, you know, life gets in the way sometimes. But I'm glad I made that decision because I see things that perhaps other people don't. I totally agree with you. I don't know if this was in my resume, but I used to be a scenic designer for the Captain Kangaroo show. But it taught me to look at the world in childlike eyes, because if Bunny Rabbit was going to trick Mr. Green Jeans into giving him a carrot by designing this machine that he tricked Mr.

Starting point is 00:47:55 Green Jeans to press a button, a carrot would come out. I was the designer of that. And so I had to think, how would a child do this? I think it wore off on me when I went about my life to kind of look through the eyes of a child. And so that's another, you ask, you know, what is a prescriptive way to find more awe is to start looking through the eyes of a child. In Zen, they call it beginner's mind. Just let's recap the benefits of doing this, because it's one thing to do it, and just doing it is a reward in and of itself, because those moments are pretty magical. But deeper than that, what are the benefits of this? Either some we haven't talked about or recap the ones we have. So recapping is on that all walk. People said they were happier and they were focused more on positive emotions.

Starting point is 00:48:50 Another study shows that it could help reduce inflammation in our body. Other studies have showed that it connects us with other people. So there are just three positive scientific research studies proving that awe is very beneficial. Well, it's a little bit like, it reminds me of the song and the saying, stop and smell the roses, but it's more than that. It's seeking out all the things that inspire awe in you and allow yourself to be awed and reap the rewards of that. Alan Klein has been my guest. He is a speaker and author. His latest book, and he's written over 30 books, and his latest book is called The Awe Factor. There's a link to that book in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:49:40 Thank you, Alan. Appreciate you being here. We have a lot of flowers around our house, and so consequently we have a lot of bees around our house. And they're fascinating creatures to watch. I don't know if you knew this, but there are over 20,000 species of bees in the world. And typically when we talk about bees, we're talking about honeybees or bumblebees. These bees are social bees, meaning they live in colonies or hives, and they're not aggressive by nature. These bees only sting if they're harmed or threatened. However, they do release a pheromone

Starting point is 00:50:17 that alerts other bees to come and assist when they're harmed or threatened. A solitary bee usually doesn't mind being looked at closely and is unlikely to sting you unless he perceives you as a threat. About 1% of the human population is allergic to bee venom, and even a few bee stings at once can be life-threatening. But for most of us, the rest of us, it would take about 10 bee stings for every one pound of body weight to get a lethal dose of venom

Starting point is 00:50:47 from bees. So for a person who's 140 pounds, that's 1,400 bee stings. In general, it is true that if you don't bother them, they won't bother you. And that is something you should know. If you like this podcast, and I hope you do,

Starting point is 00:51:04 I'd really appreciate it if you would write a quick review, just a sentence or two of how much you enjoy it, and post it wherever you listen. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, CastBox, TuneIn, wherever you listen. There's usually a way to leave a review. It's pretty simple, it's pretty easy, and it helps us a lot. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Do you love Disney? Do you love top 10 lists? Then you are going to love our hit podcast,

Starting point is 00:51:32 Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. The parks, the movies, the music, the food, the lore. There is nothing we don't cover on our show. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you

Starting point is 00:51:52 didn't know you needed. I had Danielle and Megan record some answers to seemingly meaningless questions. I asked Danielle what insect song is typically higher pitched in hotter temperatures and lower pitched in cooler temperatures? You got this. No, I didn't. Don't believe that. About a witch coming true? Well, I didn't either.

Starting point is 00:52:11 Of course, I'm just a cicada. I'm crying. I'm so sorry. You win that one. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about

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Something You Should Know - 3 Things to Fix Your Life & Finding Awe Everyday

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