Start With A Win - How Happiness Transforms Leadership and Growth

Episode Date: September 4, 2024

Host, Adam Contos is joined by Dr. Elia Gourgouris, known as America’s Happiness Doctor in this compelling episode of Start With a Win! Their discussion dives deep into the transformative power of happiness in leadership. Dr. Elia shares insights from his journey as a clinical psychologist and executive coach, revealing how happiness can be both this and that (listen to the episode to find out). Discover how embracing happiness not only boosts personal well-being but also drives team success and organizational growth. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to unlock the full potential of their leadership and personal life through the lens of happiness.Dr. Elia Gourgouris, Ph.D. in psychology, is an America's Happiness Doctor and the author of the #1 Amazon best-selling books '7 Paths to Lasting Happiness' and '7 Keys to Navigating a Crisis: A Practical Guide to Emotionally Dealing with Pandemics & Other Disasters'. He is the President of The Happiness Center and a Founding Partner at The Global Institute of Thought Leadership. His motto “Happiness is a choice!” has led him to become a leading authority in Happiness and Corporate Wellness and a highly in-demand Speaker at conferences and Universities worldwide. Over the last 25 years, he has helped thousands of people achieve happiness and fulfillment, both in their professional and personal relationships through his coaching and keynotes.https://www.dreliagourgouris.com/⚡️FREE RESOURCE: 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵'𝘴 𝘞𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘓𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱?  ➡︎ https://adamcontos.com/myleadership===========================Subscribe and Listen to the Start With a Win Podcast HERE:📱 ===========================YT ➡︎ https://www.youtube.com/@AdamContosCEOApple ➡︎ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/start-with-a-win/id1438598347Spotify ➡︎ https://open.spotify.com/show/4w1qmb90KZOKoisbwj6cqT===========================Connect with Adam:===========================Website ➡︎ https://adamcontos.com/Facebook  ➡︎ https://facebook.com/AdamContosCEOTwitter  ➡︎ https://twitter.com/AdamContosCEOInstagram  ➡︎ https://instagram.com/adamcontosceo/#adamcontos #startwithawin #leadershipfactory

Happy leaders equals happy teams. The benefits of happy employees are so many, but let's just start naming them one by one. First and foremost, happy people or happy employees are physically healthier, which means that they don't lose work, which saves millions of dollars in large organizations. They're physically healthier.

And as a result of that, you have greater retention and a lot lower turnover. And I'm talking about this is all having it back to the bottom line. Welcome to Start With A Win, where we unpack franchising, leadership, and business growth. Let's go. Have you ever wondered how happiness can be the key to unlocking your potential as a leader? Today, we talk about that on Start With A Win. Coming to you from Area 15 Ventures and Start With A Win headquarters is Adam Kantos with

Start With A Win. Today, we are thrilled to welcome Dr. Elia Gorgoris, known as America's Happiness Doctor. With a PhD in psychology and best-selling author of Seven Paths to Lasting Happiness and Seven Keys to Navigating Your Crisis, Dr. Ellya is not just a scholar, but a beacon of practical wisdom. As the president of the Happiness Center and a founding partner of the Global Institute of Thought Leadership, he's dedicated his life to helping individuals and organizations thrive through the power of happiness. Get ready to discover how happiness can transform your leadership journey. Dr. Elia, welcome to Start

with a Win. Thank you for having me on your show. And let me first say thank you for your service to this country. I appreciate that. Thank you. I love this topic, happiness. How did you get into being a doctor working on happiness? Well, my background, so I was born in, you know, raised in Greece until I was like 10 years old. Then my family moved to Santa Monica, a lovely part of Los Angeles, right on the beach. I went to UCLA, got, you know, I ended up getting my PhD in clinical psychology. So the first half of my career was a clinical psychologist in private practice. Loved it for about 18 years, got burned out, honestly, towards the end because I wasn't taking care of myself and bowed out and then switched over to the corporate side as an executive coach and leadership training and development. But happiness has been at my core, Adam.

I kid you not, since the day I was born. And I know this sounds like a hyperbole, but it's true. So I was born a long time ago in Athens, Greece, back in the day when, you know, there were no cameras in the birthing room. There was no Facebook Live or anything like that. So the story was told to me growing up. You know, my dad shows up, tough Greek guy, right? Smoking, drinking his whiskey and so on. And he comes up to this little window. There were like five babies all wrapped in the same, back in the day, white generic blankets where all looked the same, right? And my dad kind of looks at the nurse, kind of tough guy goes, which one's my son?

And apparently at that time I had a smile on my face. So the nurse turns to my dad, he goes, your son, he's the happy one. Oh, wow. So now growing up, I'm growing up with a, and that's a story that I'm told growing up. Well, you came out of the womb happy. You've always been happy, right? All right. Which is a great actually. So that's your personal brand.

And we've all been branded, by the way. When you look back early on in our lives, every single one of us has a personal brand. Even though we may not know it, it's there. Now, fast forward 25 years. Now I'm in graduate school. And our professor is talking to us about the difference between nature versus nurture. Basically, what is your makeup? Is it truly a generic predisposition, or is it the environment, or is it both?

And, of course, we know the answer is both. They both contribute. So I remember like it was yesterday. I had this terrible thought. I'm like, wait a minute. What if my dad gets stuck in traffic, shows up at the same hospital, the same nurse, the same little window, asks the same question, but 15 minutes later. And at that point, you know, I have like stomach pains and my face is red. I'm screaming my head off. And the nurse turns to my dad and goes, your son, he's the cranky one. And then I'm raised in the home. It's like, well, you came out of the womb cranky, you miserable little beep.

Now, although that's kind of a funny story, what's the truth, though, in having worked with tens of thousands of people, not just in the United States, but across the globe, is that we've all been branded. And some brands are beautiful and positive. Obviously, the happiness brand is one of the best that there ever was, right? But there are other ones, the creative one, the athletic one, the princess, the kind one, the loving one, and so on, beautiful, so on. We have a lot of brands that are positive. Unfortunately, Adam, in my, especially my profession as a psychologist, in having interviewed so many people, most people have had terrible brands. And I won't go into all of them, but I will tell you the three most common.

And you might say, well, who would ever say that to their kid? But believe me, the three of the most common unfavorable brands are the ugly one, the stupid one, and the fat one. Those are like really damaging to people's self-esteem and self-worth. So get this. About 10 years ago, I'm sharing this at a women's conference in North Carolina, 500 women and me. And the point of that is, as I'm explaining it to you too and to your audience, is if you love your brand, count your blessings, say thank you, and lean into it even more, like I have. But if you don't like your brand, as an adult now, empowered, you have a choice to make, which is I choose a different brand. Right?

We all have that choice at any given moment as adults. So as I'm giving this talk, out of the corner of my eye on the left side, there's this lady clearly in her 70s, white hair, who stands up and starts waving her arms like this. So the audience is looking at me i can't ignore her because clearly she wants some you know and they're looking at me i'm looking at her i'm like so at some point she kind of threw me off actually my talk i'm like and her name was leah by the way that's important i'm like yes ma'am and she goes you know after listening listening to you and after 70 plus years. And I've been called all three of those, plus a couple of F-bombs. That's how I grew up.

Ugly, fat, stupid, and then some. Now, at this point, it got so quiet at him, you could hear a pin drop. Like, literally. And it's an awkward moment, right? The audience is looking at me. See, I'm going to handle it. I'm looking at her. I understand that what's so i'm like you know and i'm like well ma'am

what would you like your brand to be and she looks at me and she first of all i don't know if i would be vulnerable enough to share those brands in front of 500 strangers so kudos to her for being so vulnerable right and open and sharing that with us. Anyway, she goes, well, from now on, I want to be known as Princess Leah, kind of like Star Wars. So then listen to this. So I look at her. I'm like, yes, you're mad. I just bowed down to her like that.

And everybody cracked up. And a very tense moment became a lighthearted moment. And I want to, with my talk and finish my talk. The reason why I share this with you and your audience is this. I believe if a 70 year old plus woman can change her brand, then anybody else can do it. Oh yeah. So right. Totally. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's fascinating. I love the brand of happiness. I think that's just fantastic. Well, I got lucky. I don't know.

You know what? We'll take it. I don't know. You know what? We'll take it. We'll take it, yeah. But it's fascinating when we think about this is how do we brand ourselves? How do we brand others? And how do we impact the lives of our kids by doing that? I've heard that quite a few times that what you repeatedly say to your kids ingrains within their head, and that's how they will perform in their outcomes. Exactly.

It's fascinating. I want to get into this happiness a little deeper. How is happiness defined by, you know, clinically, things of that nature? It's an emotion, right? But there's got to be some way that defines it. It is an emotional feeling, but I will go up since we both have Greek characters. I will go back to the great Greek philosopher Aristotle, who over 2,500 years ago said the following. It's so profound. He said, happiness is the whole purpose and meaning of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.

Think about what he just said. And to take it further, regardless of what country I'm speaking at, when I talk about happiness, before I start my talk, I ask the audience, if you were to ask any parent, regardless of nationality or ethnicity, regardless of their religious affiliation, regardless of their gender and sexual orientation, regardless of their, you know, socioeconomic status and so on, what would you like for your children? I just want them to be, and then I take the mic, and guess what they say? Happy or healthy and happy. That's it. And that's universal, right? So if we want that for our children, shouldn't we also want it for ourselves as adults? Well, that's a great question question because then that leads me to,

is happiness a choice? Yes. And it's also a skill set. If you just leave the happiness as a choice with an exclamation mark and don't say anything after that, that really rubs people the wrong way. Or some people who say, well, that's easy for you to say because you're the happiness doctor and you're Brenda like that. But the truth is, happiness is a choice, but it is a skill set. And if we do certain things on a consistent basis, I personally guarantee you, you will find happiness in health and wellness for the rest of your life. But it takes work. For some people, it becomes easier, like in this case, but which drives my wife crazy. Because it doesn know, because it doesn't get easy for her. She's had to work on it.

But if you do certain things, you'll find happiness. So I see a lot of business leaders that walk into the day with a, you know, a frown on their face or they're just, or even if they roll out of bed

on the wrong side and they're just, for some reason, miserable during the day. And, you know, they're upset or somebody road raged them or they sat in bad traffic or they heard something on the radio that they didn't like on their way

to work. Whatever it is, they show up unhappy. If it's a choice and a skill set, how can we, first of all, notice that we're unhappy and then what can we do about that? It's funny you should bring that up about leaders. A few years ago, I wrote an article called happy leaders equals happy teams. Oh yeah. Tell us about that. Yeah. And you know, when I started working with senior leaders, C-suite for the most part, about almost 20 years ago, and I would talk about, this is before all the studies though, before Harvard, before Ford, before all the studies, and I used to promote the idea of happy employees and engaged employees and the benefits to the bottom line.

You know what? The answer used to come from the senior that hired me to actually work on their culture. They're like, you know, Dr. Ilya, you're a really nice guy, but you don't know what the hell you're talking about. I pay these people to go to work, and they get to work. That's what I would get. And I'm like, no, I don't think you understand how powerful it is to have happy employees. And I'm not talking about switching junk food with an apple or a ping pong table in the back. I'm talking about happy employees. The benefits of

happy employees are so many, but let's just start naming them one by one. First and foremost, happy people or happy employees are physically healthier, which means that they don't lose work, which saves millions of dollars in large organizations. They're physically healthier. And as a result of that, you have greater retention and a lot lower turnover. And I'm talking about this is all having impacts the bottom line think about if you have great employees that stay in the company for a long time and there's no turnover and how much does it cost to replace good employees 200 percent of their annual salary oh exactly you know that at least yes exactly um they're better

teammates and people have said why do you say that they're better teammates. And people have said, why do you say that they're better teammates? This is the reason why. Because first of all, happy employees or happy people in general practice massive self-care. That's the number one thing that they do first, which means that their own batteries are full for the most part, whether it's physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. As a result of that, when they come to work, if my batteries are full and I see a colleague of mine who's struggling clearly and they have a cloud over their head, it's very easy for me to go and say, you know, Adam, how's your day going? Is there anything I can do to help you lift you up or ease your burden or whatever? Because they're already full.

So that's why they make better employees. If I'm empty, how am I going to help you if I'm empty? I'm struggling just to keep my head above water. So that's what makes them better teammates. They're also more innovative. They're more creative. They're more productive. And all of that stuff, you put them all together, it makes the company or their guys more profitable.

It's one plus one equals two. It's so easy to explain now. But 20 years ago, man, I got a lot of opposition from senior leaders. They're like, you don't know. And I'm like, I think I do know, but I didn't have the data behind me. I think there's all of these different employee engagement studies, longevity studies, things of that nature, all point back really to one thing, and that's happiness in the employees. And it's fascinating because it becomes a cultural aspect of the organization for a lot of these happy employees. And I mean, it's amazing. I did a presentation yesterday about employee engagement. And you've got a third of our employees are actually engaged. And then we have the middle, essentially 50% are disengaged.

And then we have the remainder, call it 18 to 20% are highly disengaged. And the first thing you hear about engaged employees are happy. And the first thing you hear about highly disengaged employees are miserable. Miserable, exactly. Which I think is like the extreme of unhappy. So it's fascinating. What can we as look at you and say, are you walking the talk? Or you just wanted to come in here, pay me a whole bunch of money to try to fix the culture who, by the way, looks to you and says, well, what a hypocrite. Or it looks to you and says, wow, yes, I want to emulate my leader because they are walking the talk. So you got to start with the senior leaders first.

And if you don't get buy-in from them and for them to invest in themselves, you know this, that the higher up you go in the organizational chart, the lonelier it gets. Right. And you and I work with CEOs and senior, it's lonely at the top. So oftentimes, you know, they need somebody like you and I as an executive coach, a consultant. And because of my own psychology background, I wasn't the typical executive coach because I brought a whole clinical psychologist for 18 years. They would really open up not just about the business, but really open up about their home life, their relationship with their spouse and so on. So I had it was more like a trusted advisor, really, than an executive coach because I had that background.

That's kind of unique that way. But I think it starts from the top. And I forgot to tell you one more thing. The greatest asset of happy employees is that they become your marketing. Because happy employees, if they like the culture that they're working in, they're going to start recruiting great talent and say, you should come and work. They have friends that are looking for a job. You should come and work with us. We have a great culture. They communicate. They're engaged and so on. So they do their recruiting. Instead of paying a recruiting company six figures to find you, they do themselves because they are the brand

ambassadors of your company because they are happy. That's an additional benefit. That's an additional benefit. That's fantastic. I mean, we all know the cost of turnover, employee churn, placement, retraining, paying other employees overtime while we're missing these open positions, things of that nature. It really affects the bottom line to a large degree. So hopefully you have enlightened senior executives or business owners and entrepreneurs that get that and then invest, you have to invest in your people.

Exactly. And I, interestingly enough, I, I, I saw a statistic recently, 51% of employees are actively looking for a new job right now. Wow. You know that 51%. No way. You can save 42%. So, I mean, the difference there is just that 9% that you cannot save, but you can save all but 9% of those leaving by really trying hard culturally within the organization. And, you know, a lot of it has to do with recognition and appreciation. I wanted to ask you, how does recognition and appreciation, that, I don't know, call it an ego boost or just a thankfulness that people receive, how does that affect their happiness? Why does that impact it? You know, no matter who you are, it always feels good to hear from somebody that I really appreciate you. And first of all, it doesn't cost anything.

You don't need to be trained and spend millions of dollars getting somebody to teach you how to say, thank you. I appreciate you. What does that take? I mean, one of the best things we can do for our own children, actually, is to use those words rather than say, oh, you're so cute or you're so smart or whatever, say, I really appreciate how hard you work on that project. Right?

So if we say that to our kids, why wouldn't we say that to our employees? But you have to have the mindset to be able to look and to catch people doing the right thing. A lot of times when we're trying to catch people doing the wrong thing, I'm like, no, focus on catching people doing the right thing and then reward them for that. And don't have like a generic reward for everybody. Get to know your people. That's why companies nowadays have chief heart officers, you know, which is beautiful, actually. And they're there.

They're not HR. They're there just to get to know the employees. And how do you get to know the employees? That's the other thing. Having an exit interview is too late. That is the most wasted thing ever, exit interview. Who cares? How about try having a stay interview throughout the year?

Several stay interviews with your employees. And what is a stay interview? It's informal. You take them out to lunch or dinner or brunch. And you have a conversation. How's your life going, Adam? What's happening at home? Get to know them, and then get to know their spouse's name. Get to know their kids.

Get to know their birthdays. Be aware of that, and really befriend them in a way, because when you do that, and the time comes where they will need some assistance and some help because they trust you and you've established a relationship, they're going to come to you. If you don't, and you're their boss, and they're your direct reports, and you don't have that relationship established before the crisis hits, then they're not going to come to you. They're going to fake it and they're going to be part of that 51% that you just described who are looking for another job.

So let me ask you about this. You mentioned the word crisis, and I know you co-authored a book about crisis as well. How does happiness impact crisis? How can happiness help us work through crisis? We get stuck in crisis. Sometimes we get that fight, flight, or freeze the fear response, but it seems like you have to have a clear mind in order to navigate those things. Yeah. You know, my, my, my first book, the happiness book, you know, the number one bestseller and so on. I wrote it from my heart and it was,

my life's work was poured into that. The second book came as a result of an actual download, as I call them. I got a download. It was on March 15th of all days of 2020, like which is March 15th. There's a symbolic day on Julius Caesar. Beware the Ides of March, right? Yeah. Or COVID, one or the other. Exactly.

And the download, and honestly, it was as loud as i'm talking to you right now so my downloads are they're always very short there's not like some long dissertation but the download was ilia there is going to be a mental health crisis like a tsunami is going to sweep the world as a result of this coming pandemic now remember that's march of 2020 so in the united States, I mean, Italy had it, China had it, New York was getting it, but really in Colorado where we live, it hadn't hit yet. So the message was, so you need to get a book out and you need to get it out in 45 days, end quote, which I looked, I'm like, what the heck? Like it took, the first book

took four years to write. How am I going to get a book out in 45 days? But there's an urgency. Right. So I called my best friend, brother, kind of, and writing partner, Konstantinos Apostolopoulos. How's that for a nice Irish name? Right. And I'm like, brother, this is what the download I got. I'm going to start working on it tomorrow. Clearly, I can't do it by myself.

That's absurd. Can you help me? And you know what? He didn't miss a beat. He said, I'm in. And I kid you not, for the next 45 days, we did nothing, nothing else, but write morning, noon, and night and edited. And we did get the book out, the first book to market in the world about the pandemic, because it was the seven keys to navigating a crisis, how to emotionally deal with pandemics and other challenges and disasters. And we really wrote it for the everyday person to help.

What we never anticipated, I don't know why it never crossed our mind, was that organizations, specifically Bank of America, in July of 20, like literally a month after the book came out, in New York, mind you, a senior leader called me up and said, hey, we're in trouble. I got a thousand employees in New York City, VOA. They're working remote. New York was ground zero, though. It was really rough back then, 2020. People were dying, the morgues were full, and so on. And she said, they're depressed, they're anxious, they're stressed out. Some of them are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Some of them have lost loved ones due to COVID.

Some of them have COVID themselves. And she said, frankly, we just don't know what to do. And I read your book. And would you speak to them? Obviously, I couldn't travel to New York because everything was shut down. So I did, like I'm doing with you right now, spoke to 1,000 employees in New York, all remote. And it hit home. It just hit home. It was one of those 45 minute talk and 15 minute Q&A that afterwards she said to me, you know what, this is going to become available to 200,000 employees of Bank of America because this is exactly what we needed. And the point is,

how do you navigate life's challenges? It doesn't always have to be a crisis, but challenges while maintaining your happiness. How do you do that? And that was the premise in some ways of the book and a lot of my lectures even now, because we're not in a crisis necessarily right now, but there's certainly challenges left and right, personal and professional, right? So we go about, and that's what I share the message. And I think. Definitely self-care is at the top of the list. I mean, that's a whole I do a whole self-care workshop how to do that. That's number one. I think the second one is to be flexible and adaptable.

Both again, both in our personal and professional lives, and we kind of use the analogy of the oak tree and the apple tree or sorry the palm tree right you know so the oak tree this beautiful magnificent strong steady 100 200 feet high beautiful tree I love oak trees. But oak trees, if there's enough saturation, enough rain, enough saturation on the ground and enough wind, what happens to oak trees? They come crashing down on people, cars, homes. This happens in every hurricane season, right? There's massive, beautiful, majestic trees. On the flip side, the palm trees, which are kind of exotic, you know, tropical and so on, at the peak of the storm, and I'm talking now about the storms of life, palm trees will literally bend almost parallel to the ground.

But when the storm passes, like every storm passes in life, and the sun comes out, guess what happens to the palm tree? It rises up. And not only has it survived the storm, but its roots have dug down underneath the ground because they're holding on for dear life. It's stronger than it was before. So the message to us as human beings is in the crisis,

be a palm tree, don't be an oak tree. So people have said, well, that's a cute story, Dr. Ilya, but in reality, what does an oak tree look like? An oak tree is something that says, well, this is who I am. That's how I've done things for the last 30 years. I'm not going to change now. And they dig in their heels versus saying, well, that didn't work. Think about Blockbuster video.

That's one of the great, you know, Blockbuster, when I grew up with Blockbuster, we used to go there all the time. They were an oak tree. Because when the time came, they had a chance to buy Netflix. Think about this. And they didn't do it. Right. Well, look what happened to Blockbuster. Look what happened to Netflix.

So we need to be flexible and adaptable as we approach life. Because if we don't, we're going to get buried in a crisis. So that's the second part. The other thing has to do, I think, with truly living life, not just with an attitude of gratitude. That's easy to do when things are going well, and we all know that. But I'm a firm believer, Adam, that we're all graduates from the University of Adversity, all of us. And the older you get, the higher the degree, because you've been on this earth long enough. And the question really is, can you be grateful in the midst of

adversity? Is that even doable? And I'm here to tell you, I believe that with all my heart that it is. If we follow, you know, one of my heroes, one of my favorite statements by Nelson Mandela was, in life, either you win or you learn. There's no losing. Win or learn. You and I have had some successes in life, right? We've been, we've got good lives. But I'm almost positive that the greatest lessons you and I have learned did not come from our successes, but came from what at the time appeared to be our human weaknesses, our failures, you know, obstacles when things didn't work out.

It was painful at the time. But when you look back, you can reflect and say, you know, I know exactly why that happened. I wouldn't be the man or woman that I am right now had those things not happened to me. I'm actually grateful for it. Obviously, not grateful while you're going through it. That's tough. I mean, if you can say, what's the lesson in the middle of the crisis? Well, good for you. But most of us, it takes some time to let it pass and look back but i just learned something new this year which i'm incorporating my life and it's this that rejection is god's protection oh that's deep it's no i've had actually the first time i heard that i'm like what did you just say

like yes rejection is protection and then i've had to go back and look at my life when times when things were rejected i'd say oh my gosh i'm so grateful that that happened. At the time, it's painful because we're human beings and nobody likes to be rejected. But long term, I'm like, I should like go and hug that person because if it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have met my beautiful, wonderful life and had a great life with her. If that woman hadn't rejected me then, I wouldn't have this now. No, no, it's kind of silly, but it's true though. Think about being your life. Think about when that happened.

Right. Yeah. It's fascinating how that works, but the school of hard knocks is a great education. And you can go into victim mode, poor me, why is this happening to me? Or you can go into navigation mode and say, why is this happening for me? Not to me, because to me, you're in victim mode. But if you say, why is this happening for me? Then we kind of go back to Nelson Mandela's thing. It's like, okay, if it's happening for me, what's the lesson here? What am I supposed to learn? And when you get the lesson, man, you're golden after that. Amazing. Dr. Elia, I mean, a huge amount of gratitude

for everything you've shared with us today. A lot of, I took a lot of notes here. Just fascinating key points. Everybody make sure you check out Dr. Elia's books, The Seven Paths to Lasting Happiness and The Seven Keys to Navigating a Crisis. Head over to Amazon and pick up your books there. Dr. Ilya, you are America's happiness doctor.

You've given us so much information today, and we appreciate you so much for that. I'm definitely a happier person after going through this. It's great to remind ourselves and continue the recognition of what we are grateful for. I do have a question for all of our great leaders on this show. Dr. Ilya, how do you start your day with a win? You know, my win every day, regardless if it's rain or shine, I go for my walk, at least an hour walk every single day, every morning, no matter what. And 50% of the time, Adam, I don't take my, I used to take

my phone all the time, but I realized that I need to leave my phone behind 50% of the time. And I, I call it my gratitude walk. So it's not just getting, doing three to five miles a day or whatever, walking in the morning. When I don't have my phone with me, I, I I'm really present, I guess, where your phone sometimes distracts you. I'm present and I look at the blue skies and I listen to the birds serenading me as I'm walking. And I look at the little, you know, the wildlife and so on. And I do a walk of gratitude. By the time I come back, I'm not only physically feeling better and breathing the fresh air and so on, but my state of mind, I've made enough deposits because of the gratitude.

You know, the best drug dealers up here, best drug dealer in the world, doesn't cost anything. It gives you the best drugs, right? We know that you cannot be in a grateful state and depressed simultaneously, physiologically. You can't have that because your chemicals that are released make you happy.

So when I return, my batteries are so full, Adam, I can take on the day. And this is a non-negotiable, by the way. Before the pandemic, I used to do that maybe three times a week because I had to, just because I'm getting older. After the pandemic, as my own stress level increased to take care of my family, extended family and friends and clients and so on, I realized that's not enough. And I started walking. This is April of 2020. And I haven't stopped. And not only do I do it every day, but I do it because I want to not because I have to, which is different. And that's my that's my win every day. I'm already ahead by the time I come back seven, eight o'clock in the morning, I'm already ahead

for the day. That's amazing. Everybody, go take a gratitude walk today. See what that does for you. Uh, you can appreciate Dr. Elia for that. Uh, make sure you check out his website. Um, you can just Google Dr. Elia happiness and you'll, you'll get right there. It's at the top. It's, uh, Dr. Elia Gorgoris.com. And, uh, you can find him on, um, really all over the internet. He's got a lot of great information. And something exciting that just recently happened, I'm getting my own TV show out. I'm called The Happy Hour with Dr. Ilya.

Oh, I love that. So The Happy Hour, that's going to be on the Mental Health Television Network, MHTN, 26 episodes for season one with an option for season two. And we're going to be talking about happiness and all the things you and I talked about today. So it should be on the air starting September 1st.

So I'm starting to record episodes right now. So happy hour. Well, congratulations. I look forward to spending that happy hour with you. Thank you. Thank you, Adam. And thanks for having me on your show. It's been a delight.

And it's been a delight to have you, Dr. Elia. Thanks for all that you do. And thanks for being on Start With A Win. Thank you.