Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 473: The Opposite of Depression | Samantha Boardman

Episode Date: July 13, 2022

Depression is a debilitating problem both on an individual and a societal level and it has only gotten worse during the pandemic. According to the World Health Organization, depression is now one of the leading causes of disability on the planet. Our guest today Dr. Samantha Boardman is going to talk about what she calls the opposite of depression— something called positive psychiatry. This approach focuses on the positive things in the lives of her patients rather than just the pathologies. Boardman is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, which is also where she went to medical school and did her four year residency program. She later went back and got a Master’s degree in Applied Positive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She recently put out a book called Everyday Vitality: Turning Stress into StrengthIn this episode we talked about:The 3 C’s (factors contributing to vitality)The notion that our understanding of happiness does not have to be internally orientedHow not all socializing is created equalWhy identifying your values is important  The value of hobbiesThe flake factorAnd the value of failure Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/samantha-boardman-473See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, everybody, depression, as we know, is a huge and debilitating problem, both on an individual and on a societal level. And it's gotten way worse during the pandemic. According to the World Health Organization, depression is now one of the leading causes of disability on the planet. Today, we're going to talk about what my guest calls the opposite of depression. She is a highly trained physician who was, by her own telling, quite suspicious at first of a notion that she now embraces wholeheartedly, something called positive

psychiatry. I'll let her define it, but roughly speaking, it means focusing on the positive stuff in the lives of her patients, rather than on just the pathologies. And so what is the opposite of depression? Her term is vitality. She argues it's not the major life crises that wear us down. It's the daily grind. So in this interview,

she's gonna lay out a bunch of strategies for handling the daily grind more effectively or to use her term how to ward off the vampires of vitality. Dr. Samantha Bordman is a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at Wild Cornel Medical College, which is also where she went to medical school and did her four-year residency program. She later went back and got a master's degree in applied positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. And she recently put out a book called Everyday Vitality Turning Stress Into Strength.

In this conversation, we talk about the three Cs, which are the factors contributing to vitality. The notion that our understanding of happiness does not have to be internally oriented. In other words, your happiness isn't just about you. She'll explain why she says not all socializing is created equal. She'll talk about why identifying what you actually care about, otherwise known as your values is exceedingly important. She'll talk about the value of hobbies, the flake factor, and the value of failure. Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again.

But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelli McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis Santos to access the course.

Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm all one word spelled out Okay on with the show Hey y'all is your girl Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress singer and entrepreneur on my new podcast Baby this is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends family and experts the questions that are in my head Like it's only fans only bad where the memes memes come from? And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪

Dr. Samantha Bordman, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. It's nice to see you. I was really interested in how you got interested in positive psychiatry. Can you tell the story of the rather tough things one of your patients said to you? Yeah, it's a little humiliating, but I went to medical school where you learn how to figure out everything that could go wrong. With somebody I was really good at figuring out like listening

to an irregular heartbeat or figuring out like where that pain is coming from and similarly in psychiatry residency that I did four years at that. I got pretty good at figuring out like what the diagnosis was, what the symptoms were and trying to dial down somebody's misery. And when I was out in practice, I was out in practice a couple years and I was seeing a patient who didn't quite qualify for a clinical diagnosis of depression, but she was not thriving. She was having a lot of issues with her partner overwhelmed with her kids and just having a tough time and feeling overwhelmed. And I'd been seeing her for about six weeks

and we were addressing these conflicts and her distress. And she came into my office one day and said, you know, sometimes I just dread seeing you. All we ever do is talk about what's wrong. And, you know, sometimes I'm even having a good day and I have to think, what should I complain about? What can I bring in there to vent about? And, you know, she was right. We'd been so focused on the problems, the issues, the conflicts, and I hadn't necessarily been focused on what gave her a sense of meaning and purpose and really made life worth living. And it prompted me to go back to school and to study applied positive psychology, which

is really the science of health and well-being that was really the opposite of everything that I had learned in medical school. Instead of focusing on pathogenesis, that is really the study and the understanding of disease, looking at saluto-genesis, which is the creation of health. And now, I mean, I really think of myself as a positive psychiatrist, and I'm sort of is interested in fixing what's wrong as I am and building what's strong and helping patients find wellness within illness and people and their everyday lives find strength within their everyday stress and I think

Originally I had gone to medical school with those bigger questions of sort of what's the meaning of life? Why are we all here? What are we doing and it really helped me kind of get back to that? To be clear when you talk about positive psychology or positive psychiatry, it's not the power of positive thinking. No, and I'm so glad you brought that up. I may be a positive psychiatrist, but I'm a big believer in negativity and negative emotions because I think they're so valuable and I think we live in a world that sort of tells us there's something wrong with us when we're feeling sad or upset or frustrated.

Positive psychiatry is though orienting one towards strengths and looking at how one can apply those to find wellness within illness. But by no means is it that toxic positivity that I think so many of us are overexposed to? Don't worry, be happy, put a smile on your face. I mean, I'd had patients who had a hard time really processing some of their negative emotions. And actually, there's a lot of data that shows how valuable it is for us to be able to dig into what's upsetting us. And I know you've had Brunei Brown on the show

talking about emotional granularity. And this is Lisa Feldman-Barritz' work looking at how we can be as specific and precise as possible. And sometimes I think that we think of ourselves as like good or bad or happy or sad when someone asks us how we're doing, but really to be as precise as possible and as specific and try to kind of put almost like police tape

around that emotion. Because what's nice when we do that is we're able to act on it and feel less overwhelmed by this cloud hanging over us. And even thinking about emo diversity, I think sometimes in that kind of binary bias, we have around our emotions, like things are good or bad, or I'm happier, sad is actually being able to hold emotions side by side and be happy and sad at the same

time that laughing through tears or even feeling that longing, but also that sense of wholeness. Even we know from people who have been caregivers to those dying of a chronic illness is being able to even find humor within the difficulty, being able to like find a moment of delight within this sadness and honoring that and learning how to do that. And so that's why I think of myself as a big fan of negative emotions as using them to even enhance sort of the richness of our experience and the nuance in our everyday lives. Emo diversity sounds like a punk band from the 90s. day lives. Emode diversity sounds like a punk band from the 90s. So you mentioned before that you had a longstanding specialty in misery and then you turned it around

and you've landed on this word vitality. So what is vitality in your view? And I believe it has several component parts. Absolutely. And it's something that is the worst award I never heard in medical school and started to hear it a little bit when I was studying positive psychology. And I have to say just from the get go positive psychology was something that was eye opening for me and something I was super cynical about to begin with.

I thought, wait a minute, this is rainbows and unicorns, you know, put a smiley face on things. And that's really not for me. And then the more I dug into it, the more I saw how valuable it was and really data-driven that it was. But vitality was something that captured for me this idea, this emotional and physical sense that one is ready for anything. And I think when people think of the word vitality, they're almost thinking of like Richard Simmons and like dancing to the oldies. And it's only something we, you know, would think about for people who are older. But vitality is this emotional, I think, and physical experience that you're

ready for anything. And there are vitality scales. And do you answer yes to the question? Like, I look forward to every day. I almost always feel alert and awake. I feel full of energy and vitality and how often people would answer no to that question. Because I really thought it captured people's everyday ability to thrive. Andrew Solomon's a psychologist and also writes extensively about mental health and his own experience with depression. And he had said that the opposite of depression isn't happiness, it's vitality. And I think that idea, though, that you're bringing that sort of everyday energy, physical, social,

emotional to each day. And what were the vitality factors? What were the vampires of vitality? What were the things that really devitalized us? And my goodness, there's a lot of them. And I think we often turn to our devices that are true vampires of vitality. But all those little things that are road are well-being. And what were the things that we could deliberately do that could help build vitality?

And I really kind of could boil it down, looking at the research, into the kind of these three vitality factors, if you will, and it was related to DC's work to around this idea that it's really in the actions you take, the connections you make, and how you participate. And I thought it was really then the three C's, one being in your connections to others, like how you are interacting with other human beings, and having meaningful conversations, meaningful experiences, when you're kind of vitalized by another, or you are vitalizing someone else. And the second sea was contributing to something beyond yourself. How are you adding value in some way that feels meaningful and purposeful and connected to what matters to you.

And the third C was how are you feeling challenged? Like positively challenged using your strengths in a meaningful way and feeling like you're sort of growing your sense of competency in some way. And these are all outer oriented, they're other oriented. And in many ways, I think psychiatry and psychology have become very interiorized, like the idea

that happiness is all in your head, that it's something that you, it's all in your shoulders, it's something that you need to think differently, and then you'll be happy, or you need to eat, pray, love your way to happiness, or move away for three months,

or do a silent retreat. And so I was really interested in these everyday activities that people could engage in that weren't going to require a huge amount of money, or that you didn't have to download or pay for or stop your life in some way for. And in that, you know, in those connecting and contributing

and challenging yourself in meaningful ways, it was where, in the data shows, people can really feel like they have a sense more of control in their everyday lives because there's so much we can't control. And so one of the things I do when I meet patients for the first time is, I'll ask them, like, what are like three or five things? Like, what do you value most? What do you stand for? What is most meaningful to you? And sometimes they're so busy kind of running on empty and haven't taken the time to even reflect on that.

They're just putting out fires, like playing that game of guacamole every day and just trying to kind of get them to reflect on that. Like, what is that? And it maybe come back next week and like try to think about that and let's talk about it. And it might be spending time with their kids or their health, contributing to their community,

whatever that thing is. And then asking them about, okay, how did you spend yesterday? How did you spend your time? And, you know, even using like a pie chart to figure out what that looked like for them. Like I woke up and I did, or I checked my email or I went for a run or went to work and then during my break I kind of got lost in this Instagram hole and whatever that is and how they're spending but they're free time and they're time doing their work and then sort of looking for

overlap. Like where are your values, what you value most, reflected in the actions that you're taking? And part of therapy is really trying to create more overlap between what they care about deeply and what they're actually doing. We have this idea that it's like, oh, if I have this amazing insight, then I'll figure everything out. This has been called insight imperialism.

And this light bubble go off. And I'll just, I'll realize that's why I act this way. It's because my mother did this, but having an insight, like, oh, this is why I do that might not necessarily lead to behavior change. Or I've had patients sort of have these sort of moments of insight but they're still not feeling much better, they're not taking action in ways that are reflecting that. So actually looking at more what we call like behavior activation, it's more focused on what you do changes how you feel and a big part of writing everyday vitality was looking at the hassles people have

compared to their uplift. Uplifts are the opposite of your hassles people have compared to their uplift. Uplifts are the opposite of your hassles. Hattles are just like the daily grind, the annoyances, the lost keys, the where's my phone, this filled coffee, just the traffic jam, the annoyances that we can't control. It's not necessarily the major life events that people experience that has such a dramatic effect. It's actually like the daily grind.

And if you're not balancing those hassles with uplifts to almost have this undoing effect on how they are grinding you down, one theory behind that too is that during these major life events, people know what to do. They're there for you. Your neighbor brings you cast roles. Your friends and family know what to do. They're there for you. Your neighbor brings you cast roles, your friends and family know how to rally around you, but when you can't find a parking space or your flight's delayed or whatever, nobody's bringing you a cast role, I think some of those everyday interactions, we don't feel like we have that social support in those situations.

You made a big part of the book is explaining how to vitalize yourself and to override some of these tendencies to retreat and to tumble into that cascade of negativity. And it was a Muhammad Ali who had said, it's not the mountains ahead that get you. It's the pebbles in your shoe. And so this book is really addressing those pebbles in your shoe. And check off book is really addressing the pebbles in your shoe and check off who

they've said any idiot can handle a crisis. It's the day-to-day living that really wears us down. Any they're right. I mean they're really, really right in this. And so one of these vitalizing forces and steps that we can take and that's really, oh, and everyday vitality is about. can take and that's really, oh, and everyday vitality is about... Coming up, Dr. Boardman talks about the three Cs, the three contributing factors to vitality. She will contend that not all socializing is created equal and she will explain why it is important to identify your values, which can sound like a platitude, but is actually practically very doable and impactful. That's right after this. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on page six or

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It angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcast. You can listen ad free on Amazon Music or the Wondering app. After the four going, I think a lot of people are going to be

wondering, well, what do I do about this? Because I imagine a lot of people will be thinking, I recognize myself in what you're describing with the pebbles in the shoe and the vampires of vitality. So what are the best practices for revitalizing? Just to start with, that connections piece is a big part of it. And getting rid of this idea that happiness is all in your head and all up to you. How are you being deliberate about your everyday connections?

And especially like in this kind of post-ish pandemic world, people being hesitant about socializing again. Not all socializing is created equal. And that actually people say when they have a meaningful conversation with somebody else, that's a huge uplift. And I think we often feel like, oh, wait, we need to make more small talk. Or should I go to, if you're trying to decide if I should go to that big cocktail party or

that dinner with six friends, choose the dinner with six friends. It can be a lot of people reporting sort of feeling like they've got a social hangover or they don't know how to make that small talk again. And even if you find yourself at some bigger event, you can leapfrog over that small talk, go into something a little bit deeper, ask somebody about how they're feeling, what they've learned during the pandemic, what's changed, what's meaningful to them, what's different.

If you're picking your kid up at school, don't be staring at your phone as they're coming out the door. Put that phone away, make it hard to reach, get rid of it, so you're giving them your full attention. So just those shared experiences, every time you're looking at your phone,

you're unsharing it. You know, is it just if you think about it that way, giving somebody your full attention, asking them meaningful questions, and even get providing what we'd call invisible support, that could be just doing a favor for your partner. It could be filling the car up with gas. It could be picking up their favorite ice cream on the way home. These little gestures, it also that sense of feeling loved and a felt love is so powerful and doesn't only help the recipient, but also help the giver, I think, feel more connected in their everyday ways. Similarly, if you're in the car driving your kid home from school or you're with your partner, just pause for a second and just say these three words, tell me more. And we know this is called active, constructive, responding, ACR, giving somebody

who you love, the platform to tell you about what's meaningful to them. Also, just thinking about how rumination is a really devitalizing experience. And rumination is when we're just going over and over and over again in our minds, that feeling of, I can't believe I said that, or why did I do that? Something that went wrong or that is going wrong or that could go wrong. And many people, just their natural habitat is rumination. So what are the things that can lift us out of rumination? We know going outside, actually just physically being in nature is a wonderful interrupter of rumination. It disrupts it just spending 20 minutes outdoors or looking at something green. But here's something else that I find

and it might be useful. If you know somebody is a ruminator, you can join them and be a co-ruminator with them, which is not advisable. Instead, you could say, if you had a friend going through this exact situation, how would you advise them? What would you tell them to do? And that lifts them out of that self-immersion and that reliving of the experience. And

suddenly you get this perspective of, oh, well, I would, you know, tell them to go and talk to their teacher the next day, or I would tell them to discuss this with their coworker. And it immediately sort of takes them out of their emotions into places, action. Another way one can do this, this is known as self-distancing, is to ask them, like, what would your future self suggest that you do right now? Or you could say, how would a fly on the wall describe this experience? These are all ways

to invite self-distancing. And another way that I really, really like is to think about somebody you admire, what would they do in this moment? What is a way that they would handle that? And I think we live in a world that's telling us all the time to be yourself. And sometimes that's good advice. Like when you're really being your best self, but a lot of the time, it's not such a great idea. I used to have this like what I would do public speaking and people's advice very well intended was always just go out there and be yourself. Turns out that's not such a good idea.

If I was really taking that to heart, I would run off the stage and out the back door. And I remember what I'd say like Barbara Walters interviewing somebody and just being so in all of her grace and how awesome she was. And having to give a talk at the American Psychiatric Association. And I just would write, I would write on my note cards. I still have those old ones like BW, BW, because it turns out when you start actually channeling somebody you admire, it gets you much closer to the version of yourself you want to be. And I think we forget this sometimes with all this emphasis on authenticity, but sometimes I think wearing another hat and especially the thinking of versions of ourselves it would

like to be or embodying the strengths that people have and we admire Is really a way to elevate us and get us closer to the version of ourselves with we would like to embody It's interesting because I know there is a big emphasis on being real or authentic or whatever and you said that this might seem To cut against that, but it's not like you're importing something that is not within you you're just asking like when you channeled your inner barber welters it was something inside of you that you were giving more space for as opposed to imitation. abs, that's so well put down, yes. And it's not imitation, it's sort of, it's emulation, but it's tapping into these strengths that I think you already possess

that just help you embody them. And so even there's a study looking at couples who were either being themselves in the relationship or tapping into their ideal self. And obviously people, when they're just being themselves, it's maybe when you're being a little starkey or a little impatient, but tapping into that better version of ourselves, like the better angel of our nature can actually help us feel closer to that sense of self that we

know is there, but maybe we're having a little bit of trouble accessing. It just raises the question one that we've discussed many times on the show, like, what is the self anyway? Yeah, I think there's this kind of binary that people think there's this intrinsic, this internal idea of oneself or this external self that the world is imposing on you. But maybe another way to think about it is, I guess there's a third path here is your values. Right now, we're living in a world where perfectionism is on the rise, young people feeling so much pressure to

be perfect in terms of their achievements, in terms of their social status, but also, apparently, this idea that other people have to be perfect and intolerance of other people's lack of perfection. But I think when we kind of can get back to that values piece where people can recognize is the self that is forever changing. There isn't necessarily a true self where all works in progress. We're all changing. Even our values might be shifting. I had had this teacher, he's a professor in psychiatry and he had asked the group of residents, you know,

what do you think the purpose of therapy is? And I was like, well, that's to change, you know, your future. And he said, no, it's not at all. And I thought, well, then to change your present and he said, not at all, you're wrong. The point of therapy is to change your past. And this idea that there's a story that we're all telling about like who we are. There's a long version. There's a short version that maybe you tell of somebody you meet at a dinner or something,

but that longer version you might tell in therapy. But the idea that sort of changing that story, recognizing the nuance, recognizing there are different perspectives is I think part of recognizing that a whole idea of this true self might be limiting and holding you back. You've talked about finding values a lot here. I don't know if I've given you a chance to really hone in on this. Why is finding your values important and how would we go about doing that?

Sure. I think that to answer the first part of the question, it creates this buffer zone. Even when things are going wrong in your life, I think when you can feel like you're walking your walk, that you are not a tumbleweed being blown about by everybody else's whims, that you feel like you're embodying your values in your everyday way, it is this scaffolding and this buffer and this shell that you can build around you. At the end of the day, you feel that even if things go wrong,

that there's this sort of elastic, this plasticity in you to mobilize again, and that you feel empowered and vitalized by those values. It's actually when we're mobilizing our values and doing things that feel meaningful to us, that I think we get this sustained benefit of an uplift, for instance. I mean, there's a lot of research that shows that somebody gives you $10. What's going to make you feel better if you spend it on yourself or you spend it on somebody else? And over and over it's when they spend it on somebody else, they give it away, they do something for somebody else, and it's not just that it feels good in the moment. It actually has this long

term, it's a warm glow of giving that it sustains itself. And I think sometimes I do worry with so much emphasis on self-care that this idea of self-focus is the answer. I had had a patient who had gone to like a retreat or the seminar, I think it was the title of it was, make this year all about you. And the result was she was getting lots of sleep and she was, you know, done a lot of cleanses and she was exercising. But there were all these ways that self-help was interfering with herself, ultimately, and her self-feeling stronger. And I think sometimes that message that pure self-help is the answer isn't necessarily true and that there's probably the best antidote we have for stress

is other help. So I think there's so many different opportunities and places and it's really been extraordinary seeing in the pandemic is it's been the first time people have volunteered in their communities have you know gotten to know their neighbor, have knocked on the door and said, Hey, I'm going to the pharmacy, I'm doing something and I'm optimistic that that compassion like will sustain itself and that compassion fatigue won't set in. After the break, we get to the third C challenge. We'll talk about the value of hobbies, which she calls the flake factor and the importance of failure after this.

I think we've now covered two of the three Cs in depth, connection, and we just talked about contribution. The third is being challenged. How do you recommend that we start challenging ourselves as a way to be more vital? Sure. I mean, this is, I think sometimes the hardest one for people to wrap their minds around, but sometimes arguably the most rewarding is there's,

I think, a tendency in all of us to engage in effort-sparing activities. Like when we have free time, passive leisure is so seductive. There's this great show on TV. I'm just going to binge watch it, a hand-me-remote control, put me in a lazy boy, and I'm done. And I would experience this too with people who had like over

the weekends this idea of just like being couch potatoes and how there's a lot of research around how people feel worse. They feel more divided lies when they spend their free time doing things that are maybe effort-sparing but that aren't rewarding or meaningful to them in any way. And look, I'm a big fan of watching a cat video or doing something that's funny or amusing, but I think when we spend excessive amounts of time or all of our free time in those effort-sparing activities, we miss out on what's known as desirable difficulty. And Harvard Business School had done this study looking at people who either sort of basically stare at their phones during their free time, or they engage in a hobby,

like something that was stretching them in some way, that felt expanding, where they felt that they were learning something that was, again, within their interest, that they felt more revitalized by that experience. Many of us outside of our work don't have things that we do just for the sake of doing them. We just do for fun or just the love of the game where we're not trying to turn it into

our side hustle. It's not going to become some other thing that consumes our energy and that we're going to get sucked into that productivity pouring around it. Just something that you even do in a mediocre way that is just fulfilling and meaningful to you. It's where you can build that reservoir of resilience and vitality is when you're engaging in meaningful, challenging activities.

I was just thinking about my wife and I started taking tennis lessons together, which is both very suburban and very bougie. And I was wondering like, okay, we're doing it, I think, for fun, but there's also an aspect of let's get our cardio. So does that turn it into a vampire or a true vitality? No, that's a definitely a vitalizing experience. And it's so interesting, and I'm glad you brought this up, is how tennis shared activities like that that are, they're associated with longevity.

And I think it's because it is a team sport. So when you were doing something active and you were doing something outdoors and with somebody, you're checking a lot of really great boxes in terms of vitality. You're much more likely to stick to it because A, your wife's going to probably be like, come on, or I'm going to kill you. And when you've got that commitment piece there, you're taking a lesson. So there's like, you've got that coaching piece there and there's community around it because maybe you guys will play with other couples.

So I really think that's awesome. And definitely a Vitality Builder. Awesome. Okay. So we've just had this fantastic guided tour through how to boost our Vitality quotient. What if we're listening to this and thinking, I can't do it. I'm depressed or I'm languishing.

I cannot overcome inertia. This all sounds right, but it's annoying because I'm not going to do it. I'm depressed or I'm languishing. I cannot overcome inertia. This all sounds right, but it's annoying because I'm not going to do it or I don't feel like doing it. What do you say to people who put up those kinds of concerns? I hear you and I'm with you and the thing is that is there one small thing that might give you an uplift today? And I write a lot about it in the book, people are saying be yourself. Sometimes I advise people like be on you. What would be something that feels unfamiliar,

not uncomfortable, or maybe like a little wobbly, maybe some cognitive wobble in there that maybe would be on you, and track whatever that thing is you do. If it's going out for a walk for 10 minutes outside and whatever you want to do, whatever that maybe that one thing that you think might help you feel better, make it easier to do it. Lower the activation energy for that. I have a patient who always puts on like a jog bra because she knows she wants to work out at the end of the day. And so she puts it on the morning

She's much more likely to show up because sometimes I think we put so much emphasis on like our self-control and You know if only I had more self-control and more self-discipline I would do this But make the thing that you want to do easier and so like maybe if it is you know You'd write like to write a letter to your grandma or you'd like to do something or pick up the phone like schedule a time to do that. Also picking the phone up and calling somebody rather than sending them a text message just to have that nice conversation with them by by some stamps to put in your desks if you want to mail a letter to somebody so they're

right there. Put your sneakers by the door, wear them to work, put that jog bra on, make the activity that you want to do, easier to do it. Also, if you could enroll a friend, I always call that like the flake factor. So they'll just hold you to that. They'll be much less likely to flake on that little thing. And this is Gabriel Ochendon's work from NYU

and she calls it mental contrasting. She uses saccharin and whoop, W-O-O-P. And so the W stands for, what is your wish like that you might have and like that would be, you know, like to look less at my phone tomorrow. It would be really kind of specific. Or like to spend more time with my son or I want to go for a walk. What would be the outcome of that?

And so like, how would you feel once you did that? Then the next O is what's the obstacle? Getting in the way of you doing that thing. And the P of what is, okay, so what's your plan? This really helps you kind of operationalize what you would like to do with what you're going to do because it's all of us have this huge intention action gap. We have these ideas of things that we think would help us feel better or we'd like to do, but it's really hard to get ourselves to do them. So I think with whoop,

you can help close that. And it doesn't have to be, again, climbing that mountain. It can just be maybe just walking up the hill. that mountain, it can just be maybe just walking up the hill. The advice a lot of experts on behavior change have given, which rhymes quite strongly with what you just said is starting small seems to be a winning strategy. I also wanted to ask you about a phrase you used when you were chatting with my colleague Gabrielle, who is the producer of the show, you used the phrase ugly coping. Oh, yeah. What is ugly coping?

Ugly coping. I think that comes from George Banano's work, who does extraordinary resilience research at Columbia University. Sometimes we're ugly copers. I think there's also, it's almost part of this toxic positivity that, you know, that maybe we do need to cope graciously and gracefully, and there's always has to be this onward, one step in front of the other of growth, but sometimes, maybe you're going to get drunk one night. Maybe you are going to eat that bucket of ice cream. There are times when people are having a difficult time that they will be coping in ways that aren't the necessarily prescribed, you know, this is what my therapist says I should be doing. And I think we need to be a little bit more flexible and accepting of

moments of ugly coping that any of us could engage in. And that's just us being human as while you heard it, the doctor said go get hammered. Okay, I'm kidding. When we are presented with challenges in ways, do we see them as a slam door in our face? You did turn maybe lemons into lemonade when when something pretty traumatic happened to you on television that you were able to see an opportunity and a growth opportunity there for yourself. And maybe having an optimistic mindset and having a sense of a belief in your ability to cope is really important. And I think having challenges in your past and having experiences where you've been exposed to challenges that were difficult and we're seeing even in the wake of

the pandemic, children who have had a terrible couple of years, not only academically, but socially, what can we do? And I think we have this opportunity now. We could take away the challenges that they are facing, or should we be giving them the skills that can help them tackle these challenges? How do we normalize challenge even in normalized failure? I remember once seeing that Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx, had told a story that I had heard once that her father would ask her every afternoon when she got home, what did you fail at today? And her idea was if you're not failing,

then you're not trying. And how do we normalize, I think, failure and challenges and difficulty and cognitive wobble, this moment where we're not feeling that we've got the answer to this, that it's going to be easy, that it's going to be that walk in the park, and I think having role models who help us, you know, navigate those challenges is a big part of these social vaccines in that role that they can play for us. Now that you're a positive psychiatrist as opposed to the sort of

specialist in misery that you, that's probably unfair, but nonetheless the way you kind of describe yourself earlier, what's your view on medication? Is it, do you prescribe less? I'm a big fan of medication when necessary, though I definitely do prescribe less. And I really incorporate my patients in that process. And I literally prescribe walks in the park. I prescribe just physical movement and ways that I know can really help boost their mood, short-term and long-term.

One technique I've often found to be effective too, and maybe for the person you were saying earlier who maybe is just like, oh, I can't do any of this, is to track how you feel before an activity, like before and after, because for all of us, it can really be like groundhog day. We really, you know, even once we do something that is elevating, sometimes the next day or the day after, the last thing we feel like doing is it, and we just are like, oh, I just don't have the energy or I'm not in the mood, but to have that tracker,

even sometimes if it's on your refrigerator or a visual of a way to see, that actually this really did help me feel much better after I did that is super helpful. So I do still prescribe. I'm a big fan of medication when indicated. Before I let you go, can you please plug your book and your blog and anything else you're putting out into the world?

Sure. Thanks, Dan. My book is Everyday Vitality. It's at an hardcover. It'll be out in paperback in August. And you can find me at positiveprescription.com and on Twitter at SamBMD, non-Instagram at Dr. Samantha Bordman.

And thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure. Thanks for coming on, Dr. Borden. Thanks again to Dr. Samantha Bordman. Really appreciate her coming on. Thank you as well to everybody who works so incredibly hard on this show. Gabrielle Zuckerman, DJ, Kashmir, Justine, Davey, Lauren Smith, Maria Wartell, Samuel Johns, and Jen Poyant.

Also of course, all the folks over at Ultraviolet Audio who do our audio engineering, we'll see all on Friday for a bonus. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by

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