The One You Feed - From Negativity to Empowerment: The Art of Positive Thinking with Michelle Gilean

Episode Date: October 20, 2023

Michelle Gilean is a highly respected figure in the field of positive psychology and mindset. With a background in national news broadcasting, she recognized the overwhelming prevalence of negative news and its impact on individuals’ well-being. Seeking to address this issue, Michelle studied under Dr. Martin Seligman, the renowned founder of positive psychology, and delved into the science behind a happiness mindset. Michelle’s book, “Broadcasting Happiness,” offers practical strategies for cultivating a positive mindset and creating positive change in both personal and professional settings. In this episode, you will be able to: Discover the impact of negative news on your mindset and learn how to protect your well-being Uncover the secret to focusing on solutions instead of dwelling on problems for a new perspective Harness the remarkable influence of positive thinking and unlock your full potential for success and happiness Tap into the power of optimism and cultivate a mindset that empowers you to overcome challenges and achieve your goals Learn how to choose progress over negativity and create a life filled with positivity, fulfillment, and growth To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In case you're just recently joining us, or however long you've been a listener of the show, you may not realize we have years and years of incredible episodes in our archive. We've had so many wonderful guests that we've decided to handpick one of our favorites that may be new to you, but if not, it is definitely worth another listen. We hope you'll enjoy this episode with Michelle Geelan. As a researcher, if I know the first few words of a conversation, I can have a high degree of likelihood of predicting the outcome. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance

of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Michelle Geelan, national CBS news anchor turned positive psychology researcher, and she is the bestselling author of Broadcasting Happiness. Michelle is the founder of the Institute for Applied Positive Research and is partnered with Arianna Huffington to study how transformative stories fuel success. She is an executive producer of the Happiness Advantage special on PBS and a featured professor on Oprah's Happiness Course. Michelle holds a Master of Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, and her research and advice have received attention

from the New York Times, Washington Post, Forbes, CNN, Fox, and Harvard Business Review. Hi, Michelle. Welcome to the show. Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here with you. I'm happy to have you on. You work with and your husband is Sean Aker, who wrote a book called The Happiness Advantage. And you have a new book out called Broadcasting Happiness, which we'll dive into here in just a minute. But before we do, let's start like we always do with a parable. In the parable, there's a grandfather we always do with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves

inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second. And he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well, I love that parable ever since I read it many, many years ago. And now I get to look at it from a scientific perspective as a positive psychology researcher. And what's amazing is that, you know, our brain, our brain's an incredible processor. We can process 40 to 50 bits of information every single second of the day. The challenge is that from all of our nerve endings, our brain is bombarded by

more than 11 million bits of information every second. So what that means is inherently there are choices in how we devote our attention, right? Because if we first focus on the hassles, complaints, problems, and challenges, we literally don't leave our brain resources left over to focus on the things that we're grateful for, the meaning embedded in the work that we're doing, the close relationships that we have. And so just like, you know, the little boy asked who wins, for us, the way our life unfolds is a result of how we devote our attention. If we can make those positive, conscious choices, then our life completely changes in a positive way.

Yeah, I agree completely. I love that, comparing our attention, you know, where we're putting our attention to the wolf parable. Now, your book is called Broadcasting Happiness, and it comes from the idea that you were an anchor woman. And what you started realizing was that the way the news was being reported was always negative, and it was actually driving people away from it. And so you began looking at ways that you could broadcast a better message. Is that a good summary of kind of where you started? Yeah, I mean, I was so lucky to have the opportunity and the platform of two national news programs at CBS. But what I quickly saw was that a lot of the news we were reporting was so negative, but it was more than just the negative to positive stories. It was a fact that a lot of the stories just merely focused on the problem. We didn't talk about what could be done about the

problem. And so what we see now in our research is that a barrage of negative news stories basically feeds you this lie that your behavior doesn't matter. Because if we just constantly talk about problem, problem, problem, problem, and we don't focus on what is our role in solving these situations, then we are left feeling hopeless and helpless. And that's what a lot of people feel when they just see a newscast for a couple of minutes or they read stories online. More recently, you know, since I left CBS News, I partnered with my husband, Sean Acorn, Ariana Huffington, and we've been studying the effect of news on the brain. And what we found is that just three minutes of negative news in the morning can lead to

you having a 27% higher likelihood of reporting your day as unhappy six to eight hours later. So what that means is that negative mood and mindset we adopt in the morning as we're, you know, making breakfast or we're on our way to work actually sticks with us through our work day. And we're still feeling the effects, you know, when the day is almost over. Yeah. And you also talk about a study where people who watch the local news view their city as significantly more dangerous than it really is. So they think it's more dangerous than what the actual facts say. Yeah, absolutely. And so it goes back to sort of what we're talking about at the top of the program, which is, you know, you only have these finite resources if we spend those resources

filling our brains with how dangerous the world is, how our community is failing, how things are going wrong, how the world is broken, then our brain doesn't have those resources to look at ways in which our behavior matters or which ways in which we can affect a positive outcome. You know, the title of my book, Broadcasting Happiness, someone wrote on a comment on Amazon, something which, you know, I totally agree with, which he's like, well, in some ways the title doesn't do the content justice in that you're not saying, hey, just broadcast some, you know, Pollyanna rose colored glasses look of the world. We don't want to just be talking about puppies and kitties and water skiing squirrels, right? We, it's really about,

yeah, those are all great things, especially the squirrel. We really want to be focusing, you know, we want to spend some of our resources, of course, like laughing and having fun in the humor. But we also want to talk about if we're talking about problems, talk about what we can do and source out solutions. And then also focus on stories of individuals and organizations where people have overcome challenges or they've done inspiring things. And that gives our brain hope and optimism that we too can create progress and success in our own lives. There's a lot of things in what you just said there that I want to touch on. The first is

listeners who have been with the show for a long time know that I'm skeptical of positive thinking. And that's not what you're advocating here. And so I'll ask you to maybe elaborate a little bit more on you know, why this isn't positive thinking. And then the other thing that you talked about through all of those things is not about ignoring that there's bad things, but it's about not believing that we are helpless in the face of them or not believing that there isn't something we can do. And that feeling of helplessness or that there's nothing we can do can be one of the leading causes of depression. Yes. So the reason I left CBS was because I

wanted to understand how we can talk about the negative, whether it be on TV or around the dinner table in our businesses, in a way that does not leave people feeling helpless and hopeless, but actually leaves you feeling empowered and ready to take that next step to create positive action. Psychologically, it's a completely different state to be in that latter state. psychologically, it's a completely different state to be in that latter state. And so, you know, I got the opportunity to study under Dr. Martin Seligman, who's the founder of the field of positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. And he's actually the person who did incredible work on learned helplessness. Originally, learned helplessness is this

learned behavior that your mind can adopt as a result of learning that your behavior doesn't matter. It's actually also considered the gateway to depression. Now, he saw how powerful that mindset can be in our lives and how that mindset can be learned. And he said, well, what if we flip the coin over and we look at the other side and we say, well, can we teach then learned basically empowerment, you know, teaching somebody their behavior matters.

And so what I study now is the science behind a success mindset. What causes you to be most successful in your life? What are the ingredients? How does your mind work as a result? And then how can other people import those elements into their own thinking to achieve more and thrive? And what we found in our research is that there are three greatest predictors of long term levels of success.

So we study this primarily in the work domain because we work with Fortune 500 companies and schools and other organizations. But this also very much applies to one's relationships and their home life and their parenting. And what we found in short is this, that it's work optimism, what we call support provision, and then your relationship with stress. So work optimism is the belief that your behavior matters and the expectation of good things to happen. It's taking a realistic assessment of the present moment, like you mentioned. But then in the midst of all those challenges, believing you can actually do something about it and good things will eventually come about if we work hard.

The second one is our story about stress. Do we view a stressful event as a challenge where our brain gets lit up to its highest potential and our brain and body are ready for that challenge? Or do we cower in fear and look at it like a threat where our brain suffers consequences as a result? And the last one, which I find actually, to me, in some ways, the most exciting is this idea of support provision. Instead of asking how supportive is my company of me and my success and my progress, we look at something that's incredibly more predictive of long-term success,

which is how much you as an individual support the people around you. And the people who are in the top quartile, the top 25% of that metric are actually, as just one example in our research, 40% more likely to receive a promotion over the next year than the people in the lowest quartile. When people score in the top levels of all three of these metrics, they make more money over the next year than the people in the lowest quartile. When people soar in the top levels of all three of these metrics, they make more money over the course of their career. They are just incredibly successful on many fronts. But what's most exciting is that these three elements of our mindset are malleable. So at any point in our lives, we can develop higher levels of all three of them. The last one is interesting because you're talking about how

we support other people and your book Broadcasting Happiness, that's kind of, obviously it's a play on your time as a broadcaster, but it's also about the idea that we're all putting something out into the world that affects those people around us. Yeah, a lot of the research in positive psychology, which is basically studying happiness and human potential, has looked at how we as individuals can thrive. And what my work now is looking at is, OK, so when you have a positive mindset and you've done all that work, how do you ripple that out to other people? And maybe also when you're not feeling as positive, how do you still have a beneficial

impact on the people around you? We have a new program coming out called Inspire Happiness on PBS. And it was a result of the work that we did with companies and individuals where we would talk about all this research that looked at how you as an individual can thrive. And people would say, okay, well, so I'm totally into this. But how exactly do I help my child do well in school when I can see that they have potential, but my, you know, my son doesn't believe it, or how do I help my negative spouse? Like I'm an optimistic one and, but you know, maybe my spouse is not as optimistic as I'd hope

for, you know, them to be. Um, and so our show is, and, and a lot of the content it's drawn from some of the ideas in my book, it revolves around this this concept of, you know, you have the power through what you say and how you say it to really significantly change other people for the better. But we walk through the steps and give the tools of exactly how to do it. And and then also we talk about the fact that, you know, it is much easier to choose happiness yourself when you're able to help the people around you become happier at the same time. Yeah, the importance of other people is a theme that keeps coming up on the show over and over again. And when you were saying that, the supporting other people, it made me think of one of our guests, Chris Hoke, who when I read him the wolf parable, he said, well, the way I think about that is what wolf am I feeding in the people around me?

And I thought that was a really interesting perspective on it and really talks very much to what you're saying. Yes, I love that. You know, as a result of this work, I mean, of course, I use it when I do work with clients, but I also end up using it on myself and in our family. I do work with clients, but I also end up using it on myself and in our family. We battle test it in our own house and being married to a happiness researcher, I have zero excuse not to do it. But what I have become hyper aware about is when I am feeding that other wolf, the wolf we don't want to feed, right? Because I'm feeling negative. I haven't slept very well the night before.

I've got a two-year-old. As any parent knows, that can happen. negative mood. I haven't slept very well the night before. I've got a two year old, as any parent knows, that can happen. And, and, you know, I wake up in a grumpy mood. And I get to a point where I'm saying, Okay, I know that my day is not going to be as happy as it could have been had I just gotten a good night's sleep. But am I going to now inflict my suffering on everybody that I come into contact with? Or am I going to be a little bit more emotionally evolved, hopefully, you know, practice it every day. And and just and realize that, you know, what I talk about, and whether I complain, or whether I'm, you know, moaning about how I didn't sleep, that really does impact other people. And so I think it's, you know,

a lot of people will say, so when so when I give, uh, talks at companies, I'll say, so how many of you raise your hand have ever heard from somebody? You can't change other people. And, uh, and I get, I mean, literally everyone raises their hand, right? You've heard this many, many times over the course of your life. But we know though, that even though we're buying into this societal misbelief, we know that we change people all the time through what we talk about and even our nonverbal body language. And so owning up to that power and responsibility, I think is a really important thing to do. I do think it's a myth also

that we can't change other people. I think that we can't change other people into exactly what we want them to be or doing exactly what we want. But yeah, we do have influence over people all the time, both positively and negatively. Yeah, without a doubt. I mean, we see in the research, I love there's this one study from the University of California, Riverside, where researchers asked three people to go sit in a room for just two minutes without speaking. And then they tested their mood before and after. And what they found is that the person who's the most non-verbally expressive, right? Because they're not saying a word, but it's how they sat there, their body language, their arms crossed, their faces frowning. Do they seem more positive and relaxed?

Whoever was the most expressive person in the room influences the mood of the other two people significantly. And that's just two minutes. Can you imagine if we have the ability to talk to people and to say meaningful things? We can change other people and it happens all the time. We could all use the occasional nudge, a little wake-up from the autopilot we fall into in our day-to-day routine. That's why we send brief text reminders to listeners of the show for free. The texts help you stay on track with what you're learning from the podcast episodes we release on Tuesdays and Fridays. They periodically prompt you to pause for a second and become more present and mindful

and encourage you to engage with the week's podcast topics in a bite-sized, short, and simple manner. We've heard from listeners that these texts help them take a moment to reconnect with what's important amidst the busyness of daily life. Someone said, it feels like a little bit of wisdom is being whispered into my psyche, which I thought was cool. So if you'd like to hear from us a few times a week via text, go to oneufeed.net slash text and sign up for free. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your

cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during the floor? We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us tonight.

How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really?

That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, really. No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So let's go back to my earlier thoughts on positive thinking, because I want to ask you sort of what's the difference between what you are proposing and what's traditionally labeled as positive thinking?

Positive thinking, I think, well, there's two major differences. First of all, we're looking at the science behind all of this, which says, OK, we know, for instance, that gratitude is good for you. Right. And every single major religious tradition talks about it. just tradition talks about it. All the, the, the leading thinkers through the ages have touted the, the, you know, positive side of being grateful and practicing it. What we ask as researchers is, okay, well, how much should you do specifically? How do you do it? Do you involve other people in the practice? Should you write in a notebook? Is it better on your computer? And if we do it, how much does it change you? You know know there was a study done with i love this study 80 year old grumpy pessimist and uh and research is trying to make her optimistic

and what i love about it is that you know these guys who had been practicing pessimism their entire life by doing gratitudes by doing three writing down three new and unique things they were grateful for specific things each day. Um, those that kept up the practice for six months went from testing on a metric as a low to moderate level pessimist. They all of a sudden were testing as low to moderate level optimist. So we could see a change there. And the other thing is that sometimes positive thinking can be mislabeled as, I mean, or accurately labeled, depending on what, you know, the person's promoting as sort of, I'm going to think positively and stuff will happen and everything's going to be great. need a positive vision in your life full of hope and optimism to get you going, that's the good fuel, but it takes action behind that. So broadcasting happiness is broadcasting that mindset while also taking the action to fulfill the vision of what you're looking for. Yeah. One of the questions that I talk about on the show, and I'm going to see if I can frame it

in a way that makes sense, but there's a lot of talk about, hey, when you have an emotion, you should try and feel that emotion and not repress it. And then there's the other side of the coin that sort of says, you should put a positive spin on things that happen in your life. How do you reconcile those two things for yourself? I would say that it's important to feel emotions. We actually, we absolutely want to be in touch with them, but we have to catch ourselves not to allow ourselves to dwell in or ruminate on these negative emotions because ultimately I don't think that actually helps you. There is value to kicking your brain out of that negative state, either distracting it or compelling it to move to a more positive place. You know, it's interesting. So my

husband and I, when we had our son Leo, initially, when he started walking around and, you know, falling down and stuff, we had completely different responses to him getting hurt. So not hurt really badly, right? But just like a little bump and he starts crying. And so I would come to our son and say, Oh, Leo, did you get hurt? Oh, I'm so sorry, honey. Where does it hurt? And Sean, while showing compassion would very quickly switch to distraction, you know? And so you say, Oh, look at that. There's a fire truck or look what's going on. And what we ended up, we had a long discussion about this. And what we ended up doing was deciding to kind of meet in the middle at where we honor the feelings that he was having, right? It hurt. His knee was skinned and we got

to, we got to address that, but also not staying stuck there. And so then I adopted more of his approach, which was like, okay, now let's distract and let's figure out what's positive about life that we can move our brain on to. And I think it's worked really, really well. I think that's a great analogy. And I also believe that it's the middle ground on a lot of these things that make sense. Like even what we were talking about before about you can't change other people. That's such an extreme position. You know, there's somewhere between I have total control, and I have no control over other people that's sort of in the middle. And I think with that is the same thing in an analogy that that I like to use the and you might have better ones,

because you do this more often is like, if I walk into a hotel room, which I do often, if I look, there's inevitably something about that hotel room I'm going to be dissatisfied with. And there's something in that hotel room that I'm going to really like. And which of those am I going to choose to back to your first piece you talked about, which of those am I going to put my attention on? And sometimes I have to very consciously keep putting my attention back to the positive one. But I think it does yield benefits. Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes where it's easier for us to keep our attention on the positive things. And I love your analogy, because it's so visual, it's so easy. We've all done it, right? We've, we've all walked into a place and seen the problems as opposed to seeing the things that can

bring us happiness and joy. But, you know, and sometimes it's just a simple matter of how much sleep we've gotten, or if we're feeling burnt out from work, have we had practice keeping our mind in that positive state? Those things can matter greatly. Let's go deeper into the book with a couple of things. I want to talk about what you call the power lead. Can you tell us what that is? The power lead is where you start off conversations or any other interaction you have with another person by saying something positive and meaningful. The reason I suggest the power lead is one of the first tools that we talk about in the book is because it is so transformational to start a

conversation in a positive place as opposed to a negative one. I mean, we've all been in a meeting, right, where someone starts off negative and the whole thing only nosedives from there. Versus if you can start off a conversation when you're asked, how are you by saying something positive and meaningful or a meeting by listing gratitudes, delivering praise or asking for people to contribute to a positive leading question, it completely changes the outcome. As a researcher, if I know even just the first few words of a conversation, I can have a high degree of likelihood of predicting the outcome of that conversation. You know, so mine this morning

might have been if you asked me, hey, how are you? My power lead could be, oh, I'm doing great. I had breakfast with my son this morning and he's being so cute. You know, just that simple, positive and meaningful piece of information encourages people to match in kind and it changes the direction of the conversation. And it's not to say at any moment that we want to ignore the negative. If you have a real problem going on and you're talking to someone that you trust, it's okay to, of course, discuss those things right off the top of the conversation. But this is on the whole, on the average, what are you talking about? Are we just going, oh, I'm stressed, I'm tired, I'm exhausted and complaining? Or are we sharing

things that enrich other people's days and let them have a window into our positive world. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you

and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know

who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight,

welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening?

Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the book, you say that negative people are not bad people. Our brains can just get stuck. We can become really good at finding what's not working and letting everyone know. And then you go on to spend a fair amount of time talking about how to deal with negative people in our lives. And I think that's a topic that gets everybody's interest. So can you give a couple tips on working with the so-called negative people in our lives? I like not calling them bad. I think that's a great start. But what

else? Yeah, negative people, that's probably the single biggest question I get from people because they're thinking about at work, they're one negative person on their business team that's dragging everybody down. Or, you know, maybe you come home from the office and you're coming home to see your family and you're so excited and about something going on and maybe your spouse just kind of rains on your parade. And, you know, a lot of times we really we care about these people. We want to help them. And so what's the best way to do it? First of all, I think the most important thing is to understand that it's not the most positive or negative person that wins the battle for culture at our companies or in our relationships around the dinner table. It's actually the person who's most expressive of their mindset. So what that means is if you're already positive and

optimistic, in general, when you are in the especially when you're in the presence of the negative person, the more that you can be without being annoying, expressive of your own positive mindset in a meaningful way that actually can encourage those people to to be more positive, and it helps them see that the things that are, you know, are good in the world. But the other thing is, if that person is continually being negative, and you have tried and tried to help them see the light or look at the world in a different way, it's okay to take some distance from them. In the book, I talk about this idea of taking a strategic retreat, which is to, you know, take some time to take some distance from them and fortify your own

positive resources by doing those positive habits that we often talk about your gratitudes, exercising, journaling about meaningful moments, seeing friends that bring you up instead of bring you down. And when you feel like you're in a good place and you can re-engage with them, but have a plan. Don't just go in there, right? Don't just call up your in-law who you typically don't get along with on the phone. Instead, have a plan. What could the conversation look like? How could it be short and sweet? What could you say? And get basically a two-minute drill down in place so that when you do have that next encounter with them, there's at least some

sort of framework that can help you have a positive short and sweet experience with them. The key is not to change them entirely and change their entire outlook in that conversation. It's just to have a good experience, which then hopefully will create a trajectory of positive experiences with them over time and helps you rewrite the social script that exists between you. Yeah, I was thinking about your book earlier today. I had to have a difficult, somewhat difficult meeting with somebody, and they came in already mad about something else that was happening. And I was like, after reading your book, you know, I might want to take a strategic retreat here.

Unfortunately, I needed to have the conversation then. But I was able to really think about making sure he was de-escalated before I went into what I was going to talk about. That approach is so enlightened, because what you're doing is you're getting an emotional read on the other person. and then you're able to Address whatever is happening there before you move on to something else I think that that's that really takes into account sort of where they're at But also allows you to move the conversation or the experience into a more positive place Yep

I think an older version of myself would have recognized that he was upset and then just chosen to skip the conversation. So I was happy to have persevered. One of the things I really liked that you talk about was you say we need to move our brain past its natural focus on what we need to improve to what is already working. We accelerate towards growth when we have perceived progress, not when we feel we still have a long way to go. I think that common wisdom suggests that in order to create great change in the world, we need to focus on all that's broken and figure out how we're going to fix it. And then that will finally leave us time and resources to then make our lives great.

And what we're realizing now is that the research shows you just really need to focus on the things that you can improve, but or that are already working. And that'll actually fuel you so much more in the long run. Yeah, I think that's in line with my experience of negativity can be temporarily useful as a motivator, but positivity is a far better motivator and a much more long-term sufficient one. Most of the big changes I've made in my life, there might have been something that kicked it off from a negativity perspective, but it was me focusing on how well I was doing as I was doing it that really gave it the energy to keep going. When our brain focuses on progress and, you know, basically the successes we've had and the solutions that we're going to use to move forward, that's fuel for the brain. In a follow-up study that I did with Arianna Huffington and Sean, we found that if you merely talk about

problems versus you talk about problems and potential or actual solutions, you change other people's brains. In particular, when you pair a discussion of solutions with problems, you actually can improve other people's creative problem solving on subsequent unrelated tasks by 20%. So you're making them basically 20% smarter and you're improving their mood as significantly as well. So, you know, what that means is that we can talk about the negative. We just have to talk about it in a different way and how important it is to focus on how far we've come. You know, that's one problem that I'm finding with the news right now is that oftentimes you can walk away from the news if you read too many negative stories with this belief

that the world is just falling apart, right? It's as if the apocalypse is coming or it's here or whatever. But when you look at the stats, there's a completely different picture. According to Harvard researcher Steven Pinker, we are living in the safest times in human history when you look at war deaths or number of deaths from infectious diseases and all kinds of other key indicators of quality of life overall. So if we think that the world is falling apart, well, why would we want to apply our behavior and try to make things better versus we see, hey, yes, there's

lots of things that are left to do to fix this world, to make it a better place. But look how far we've come. That second viewpoint is much more fueling. Amen. I couldn't agree more. I do think that it's easy to see things as falling apart. You know, we do things two steps forward, one step back. And if you're in the middle of that one step back, it feels very painful. But if you take a broader time perspective, from my perspective,

and I've read Steven Pinker's work, it's getting better to be a person than it was in the past. Absolutely. And I know, you know, especially more recently with all the, you know, all the news that being very, very negative, it's just, it's, it's so important to remember that as an anchor point to help us. Yeah. I love the, the little idea from Voltaire's book about tend in your own garden. I find that to be such a powerful thing to go back to when the negativity out in the world feels overwhelming to sort of stake out my little area and say, well, not in here.

Yeah. I, I met this incredible woman whom I talk about in the book. Her name's Sharon. And so we were developing a positive psychology program for one of the major big box stores. And you know, there's a 1.5 million associates. So you want to make sure to get it right before you roll out this program. So we went to pilot it and get feedback at a number of stores. We get to the store in Memphis and I gave our little spiel. And this woman after the morning meeting comes up to us and says, Oh, you're a happiness researcher. I'm the happiest woman in the world. You should study me. And so he said, okay, tell me your story. And so she said, well, um, you know, I was, uh was I waited until later in life to get married because,

you know, I just didn't meet anyone until then. But I met this amazing man and we've been married for about six months when my mother dies suddenly of health complications. And I was very close to her. And so she goes on to tell me that her husband was really stuck by her and was this beautiful support system all the way through the mourning process. And so about six months after that, she's, she's finally starting to just, you know, sort of feel back to normal when he gets killed in a car crash. And so I'm, I'm looking at her and she must've, you know, I like, I can't hide a single

emotion. It's always on my face. I was confused and didn't understand the story and how she could call herself the happiest woman in the world. And so she said, Well, the reason I have the right to is because after morning, my husband's loss, I got to a point where I said to myself, every morning, I have a choice of whether or not I can, I'm going to choose happiness. I have that choice and it's whether it's up to me whether or not I exercise it. And what she did was she consciously decided that every day she was going to choose to be happy. And moreover, when she came into work, she chose to be very open about the fact that she had gone through that struggle, but she was

choosing to be happy at that point. I talked to her co-workers and they said that she was the most positive person that they knew. By the way, her power lead was great because she would just say, it's a great day. How are you doing? She doesn't even let you get in there and mess it up. It was just absolutely incredible. But she reminded me that no matter what's going on in the external world, we have that choice internally. And the question is, what do we decide to do with our finite lifetime and our finite resources? And then what kind of impact do we want to

have on the people around us? When you say choosing to be happy, I have a little bit of an internal reaction to that as somebody who has suffered from depression. And I know a lot of listeners also have that feeling. And I think that's exactly what we're saying. Because I don't think you can necessarily, at least to me, it doesn't feel like I can flip on a happy switch. But I can flip on a switch of how I want to view the world and what stories I want to give power and energy to. Yeah, absolutely. And I completely understand as well, because when I was in my mid 20s, I suffered a year long bout with depression. And I know depression is different for everybody. For me, I was just I think I was isolated. And you know, I had I was so excited the year before I got this awesome job in London. I was moving overseas.

It was like top of the world. Right. And then I think because I was working from home, I knew no one. I had no social life and I was isolated. And I'm a very extroverted person in many ways. The whole combination didn't jive. But and so I know I understand what it's you can't at the in those moments. Oftentimes, you know, say,

oh, I'm all of a sudden, I'm just happy. I just flipped a switch. But I think what we can do is we can, in the midst of those moments, we can still maintain an optimistic mindset that things will get better. We can say, you know, I know that I have 16 waking hours and with one of them, I'm going to go to the gym and get some exercise because I know that it can make a difference. You know, there've been studies that show that, or I I'm going to connect with friends because, you know, for instance, one piece of research that I hold close to my heart is the greatest predictor of long-term levels of happiness that we have in the research is our levels of social support. You don't have to have a ton of friends, but just a handful of meaningful relationships. And if we can stay connected to

other people, then that can help buffer us against depression and just low mood. So if we know that, then we say, okay, well, I'm going to consciously try to schedule some time with friends to go for a walk or to have a meaningful conversation. Those small habit changes for me, that's what walked me out of depression. And that's been beneficial for, you know, obviously thousands of people. But it's maintaining, I think, that hope and optimism in the midst of that. And I think that can be, in many, many respects, that can be a choice. I don't know that I think we have a lot of control over what emotion we feel in particular when we're particularly in depression. But I do think that we have some degree of control over our thoughts and our behavior. And I think those can act as

levers, at least they have for me, by working on my thinking and my behavior, I'm able to sort of, you know, using a lever, adjust my emotions. You know, I can't do it directly, but I have tools that can help. Yeah. And it's so incredible to see, you know, just in my own personal life, how quickly our brain can forget how good some of these positive behaviors can be for our mood and for how we feel. You know, I have a low mood. I'll say, it's exactly the time when I don't want to go exercise, right? But even if I just put on my sneakers, and I go out for a 10 or 15 minute walk outside, right, nothing strenuous. Oh, my gosh, all the all of a sudden, I'm feeling better. And

I forgot, you know, it's like, I forgot that that would actually be good. The brain is adaptive for good and for bad. And yeah, but you know know, one other study that I often talk about in relation to this, just because I think this is so powerful and this is something that you don't hear about on the news. There was a study done with one of the major antidepressants and looked at it in comparison to exercise as a treatment for mild depression. And what they found was that for, so that what they did in the studies, they gave one group antidepressants, another group, they had them exercise for 30 minutes a day, three to five times a week. And then the other group,

they did both. Okay. So in general, all three groups had sort of equal levels of moving out of the depressive state. But what was really remarkable was the researchers followed them for two years. And the group that had exercised were the ones that had a 39% lower relapse rate than the folks that had either that had taken antidepressants. So this is not a repudiation of antidepressants. I think that they serve a very valid and important purpose in our society in many respects. If that's what your doctor feels, great. But what I think is what this is indicative of is that when you do a habit that reminds

your brain that your behavior matters, like getting out the door every day and exercising, all of a sudden you've got that in your toolkit and you can go back to it if you need. And that can help protect you for experiences later on. Yeah, I agree a hundred percent. I mean, I have, I take antidepressants and they've been a huge help in my life, but they are not alone enough. It's like, it's the, it's all those other things. I mean, exercise for me is, it's really required at this point in my life if I want to feel half decent. And so, yeah, I agree.

I love that idea of having a toolkit and just going back to it over and over, even when it's hard. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for the work that you're doing. Thank you for coming on the show. I really enjoyed reading your book and getting a chance to talk with you. Oh, thank you for having me. And thanks for the work you're doing.

You're a positive broadcaster, which is, oh, that's my big wish for the world. So thank you so much. I really appreciate you inviting me on your podcast. Okay, excellent. Take care. Bye. Bye. you can learn more about michelle geelan and this podcast at one you feed.net slash Geeland. That's G-I-E-L-A-N, the peace symbol, the letter four. Letter four. I'm kidding. I know you'll figure it out. If what you just heard was helpful to you,

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