Speaker 1:
0:00 Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Conversations on Wellbeing at Work, the podcast of Wellbeing at Work World. We run summits on wellbeing in eight regions around the world, and this podcast features both speakers from those events but also experts that we come across in our travels, as it were, and on the website you can also find out about our hub and also a number of webcasts that we run around as well, so I do recommend that you take the time to have a look at that. Today is Professor Dr Jennifer Gutman, the author of Beyond Happiness Six Secrets of Lifetime Satisfaction. Welcome to the show, Jennifer.
Speaker 2:
0:41 Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1:
0:44 It's great to have you with us and, as I say, the book we're also a book called Beyond Happiness and it's certainly a very timely topic. I'm finding that frequently these topics within the wellbeing area come in and out of favor. They have a certain cycle around them and 10 years ago I remember happiness being quite a big thing with employers and organizations. I think in this post-COVID world we're in, it seems to have come back and being emphasized by a lot of employers. But it seems to me from the start of your book Beyond Happiness is there something wrong with happiness that we need to fix, or what's your approach?
Speaker 2:
1:18 Yes, there's nothing wrong with happiness if it's just thought of as an emotion like any other emotion, like sadness or worry. But the problem is that people think happiness is so easy to reach and that if you're not feeling happy most of the time you're failing. And society has made it seem like happiness is an easy emotion to achieve. And yet it's not easy to achieve in a sustainable way. I recently saw on a popcorn bag that it said if you eat this popcorn, you'll be happy. But really, if you eat the popcorn, maybe you'll be satisfied, but you're not going to be happy.
Speaker 2:
1:56 And in that way we send a message to people's brains that it's so easy to feel this emotion of happiness and that by the end of each day you're going to be happy. And then people are disappointed because that's not how they feel. And then when they look at social media and everybody seems happy because social media is curated to make it look like everybody's happy then they feel like they're doing something wrong and that leads to a feeling of despair and disappointment that everybody else seems like they're happy and we're not feeling happy. And yet again, social media is romanticized to look that way and most people are only feeling moments of happiness. Dopamine hits of happiness, not sustainable happiness.
Speaker 1:
2:39 Yes, Someone I follow on LinkedIn had a post recently that was a poll and they'd asked how do you feel better after you've gone through your feed on LinkedIn? Do you feel sort of better? And it was like 80% of people felt worse after going through it. I think because you never make that comparison and everyone seems to be wonderfully successful. They've all got better jobs than you, they're making more money, they're in some exotic location that they're posting from. So you think social media is harming our sense of well-being in that regard, right?
Speaker 2:
3:10 Yes, I saw the same thing on LinkedIn and, yes, I do think that it is because I think that the point of social media is to romanticize people's lives. When you look at social media, our minds make a mental movie out of what we're seeing on a post. We see a post and then we make a movie about what happens before and after the post. This person's life must be like this. What doesn't occur to us as we're making this mental movie is that maybe people like the baby was crying before the post was the picture was taken, or the family got into a huge fight before the photo was taken, it's gone to a huge night before the photo was taken. It's a snapshot, but we don't look at it like a snapshot. We look at it as a movie into someone's life, but that's not what it is, and because of that, we think that our lives, then, are lacking.
Speaker 1:
3:58 And so I think that sort of plays into the idea of happiness as being a bit of a transitory state and something that's a bit of a quick fix, and then what happens afterwards. So, from your, the way you framed it right from the get go, in the title of the book is secrets of lifetime satisfaction. So we're looking at something that's more durable and therefore you need to take a longer term approach to that.
Speaker 2:
4:22 Yeah, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1:
4:24 And you've got six things that you recommend you do. So I think the best thing to do is to run through those and just have a brief conversation about each one and give people a sense of where they may be, what might be a better strategy for them, for producing sort of something that's akin to happiness but is certainly sustainable and gives them a sense of pleasure and purpose. So what's the first thing that you recommend folk do?
Speaker 2:
4:49 I just want to mention that happiness is dependent on things happening in the outside world. The point of sustainable satisfaction is that you have control of it right within yourself. Way, satisfaction is something that you can feel you're developing resilience about, self-reliance about, because it's not something that is controlled by other people. You can develop the skills right within yourself, and that's why this is a skills-based approach. Most people struggle with some or all of these techniques, including myself, even though I've worked on them with myself. And the sixth skills are avoiding assumptions, guesses that we make about what other people are going to say or do without any evidence.
Speaker 2:
5:36 Reducing people-pleasing behaviors, which is putting other people's needs before our own, which can often create resentment. Other people's needs before our own, which can often create resentment. Facing fears, which it doesn't mean running into traffic. It just means that we want to move out of our comfort zones, to increase our feelings of competence and competence making decisions, because we tend to delegate decisions to other people, because we feel that all decisions are high stakes and we need to learn to be able to pivot, and that also brings about feelings of competence and competence Closing out tasks, because we often start things but we don't finish what we start, because finishing tasks can require annoying attention to detail and active self-reinforcement, and this is particularly important because we tend to delegate reinforcement to an outside role that is fickle and unreliable.
Speaker 2:
6:34 I have a client that has a three by five card in her office and she has all of the strategies on this three by five card and she checks in with herself to see if she's engaging in any of these behaviors, and if she is, then she can course correct, and if she isn't, then she can reinforce herself.
Speaker 1:
6:52 Okay, so it's pretty comprehensive approach there. So let's unpack a couple of these, see how many we can run through. I've got a few. We'll do them in order, although I've got some questions, a couple near the end that relate to some of the struggles I have with life. But let's, this isn't about this podcast, isn't about me. It's about you and your work. So, avoiding assumptions, that is, people do we do create in our minds in order to navigate the world, we have to create a, an image of what's happening, of cause and effect, so that you're talking here where people maybe say something about your work or what you're doing and you assume it's coming from a particular place, a particular point of view, and you really need to check yourself there and maybe inquire a little bit about what it is exactly they mean. Is that what you have in mind there?
Speaker 2:
7:37 I think it's important to recognize that we all come from a place where worrying is an evolutionary byproduct. It's literally in our DNA. We have evolved from mammals and we're constantly looking out for predators or catastrophic occurrences. But we don't need to live in fear of predators anymore. But that means that we're constantly working against our natural instinct towards a negativity bias. For that reason, we lean towards the negative. When we're making assumptions, we don't lean towards the positive. So it's not like we're saying, yes, I'm getting that promotion, we're worrying that we're not going to get that promotion. And we're not saying I just gave this deliverable to my boss and my boss is going to think that it's great work. We're saying what's my boss going to find is a problem with this deliverable and in that way? Or my boss just looked askance at me. We're not saying, like, where's the evidence that my boss looked askance at me.
Speaker 2:
8:36 So the point of avoiding assumptions is do I have evidence that there's actually a problem, as opposed to I don't really have evidence. So neutral, no information is not negative. No, information is just no information. And that's what avoiding assumptions is about. Yes, so the strategy that I recommend to people is imagine a jury of your peers. If you don't have enough information to convince a jury of your peers that there's actually something going on, then you need to wait until you have enough information from people in your workplace, people at home, before you act on the assumption, by either spiraling in your mind or going to talk to somebody about a problem, until you actually know that there's a problem.
Speaker 1:
9:24 Yeah, and presumably there's a little bit of a flip side to that, which is that obviously, while you're busy there making assumptions about everybody else, they're all out there making assumptions about you.
Speaker 2:
9:34 Right.
Speaker 1:
9:34 So, in terms of your own communication, you need to be really clear.
Speaker 2:
9:39 And the other thing is that frequently what happens is that if we're making assumptions about somebody else, we change our behavior towards them based on the assumptions we're making. And that confuses our audience because they don't know why our behavior is changing towards them if they haven't made this assumption about us that we think they made and they don't understand why we're acting differently because they haven't actually thought the thing that we decided that they were thinking. And because of that, then we start a domino effect of changed interactions because our behavior is changed based on an assumption that never happened just the other day, the hydrant of the power went off in our house, right.
Speaker 1:
10:19 So the first assumption is the power line is down somewhere. So I went outside and I saw the next door's light was. Lights were still on on both sides of us. I came back in and my wife said to you, the power's gone off, did you forget? You forgot to pay the bill, didn't you? And I thought, well, she was certainly making an assumption there, and probably not an unreasonable assumption, but in fact it wasn't true. It was just that for some reason, everything had flipped. But you do immediately.
Speaker 1:
10:41 My mind immediately goes oh geez, I didn't play that. I'll be playing the bill that they've cut us off. Oh, I won't be able to cook food tonight. It's freezing cold out. It's what am I going to do? I can't watch the. I was going to watch that, my favorite netflix show, and that's the cascade of and. That didn't involve a third party. It was actually an animal, of the inanimate objects, of the, the hydra. That's how I've gone to, but that's that's which I think leads us into maybe the next point, which is people pleasing, which I tend to associate particularly within relationships, is that another tendency that most people have to want to please others. I'm hoping that people I know want to please me. I don't necessarily want them to be slaves to that, but that would be nice, wouldn't it?
Speaker 2:
11:24 So how does that play?
Speaker 1:
11:25 out.
Speaker 2:
11:27 There's a difference between. Some people say I don't want people to be a good friend, and that's not true, because there's a difference between people pleasing because you want to do something nice, to be a good friend, versus rescuing someone or always putting yourself last. And as humans, we have a strong need for human connection, but when it isn't appreciated or acknowledged, we feel robbed. Yet we're all at risk of falling victim to what's called sociotropy, which is foregoing our own desires altogether in order to maintain social connection at all costs, and when we do that creates resentment. It's important to have, if you're going to have fulfilling relationships and relationships built on mutual respect, that you have relationships that are based on transparent and open communication, and those are the most fulfilling relationships that I see in my practice.
Speaker 2:
12:28 Had moved into Manhattan and her mother was rushing into Manhattan all the time to clean her apartment and do her laundry and do all these things for her.
Speaker 2:
12:32 But it was clear her mother was becoming resentful to do all of these tasks for her and didn't feel like her daughter was being appreciative enough. So we talked about it and she said to her mother I love you coming into the city to see me, but why don't we go out to dinner or to movies or to a museum, you don't need to come into the city and do all these acts of service for me. And she said if I need you to do something I'll ask you, but otherwise let's have fun together. And that has helped the relationship a lot, and that's somebody that has very good communication skills in order to work this through with her mother. But for people that don't, it's important to always practice saying no to the things that you don't want to do in a very mindful way and not apologize for saying no, because when you apologize for saying no, it leaves the door open for somebody to ask again and each time you say no, it becomes harder and harder to say no.
Speaker 1:
13:31 Nobody wants to have to say no more than once no, I I see interesting to me, but but a bit of a tangent here, mate, maybe. But one of the things I've always associated with happiness and and and it's something that's not I, I don't see specifically specifically in in in the list that you're working with here is around gratitude, right, and the importance of gratitude to, to your sort of well-being and your sense of happiness and satisfaction, that if you're always pleasing somebody, there's a good chance they're also probably ungrateful, right, you're actually generating a sense of ungratitude in them, so you're, in that sense, you're actually not helping them live fulfilled lives, even though you're maybe bending over backwards to do every little thing they might want. Does that, does that make sense? I?
Speaker 2:
14:20 think I think that's true because the help is coming too quickly before there's an opportunity for them to say, oh, I should be grateful for of this, because this is such a nice thing that's happening, as opposed to oh, I get this all the time. I stop appreciating it because I'm not even noticing it anymore. It's constant.
Speaker 1:
14:53 Yeah, and the other thing that strikes me and a lot of my work lately has been around human connection and the importance of that to well-being, and something that was, I think, particularly sparked by the Surgeon General's report last year around loneliness and the like. So there's a lot of focus on that sort of happiness as other people we talk to strangers, you'll feel better, have so many close friends and be nice to the neighbours and all those sort of things. That are all very, I think, all very important and outward looking. And again, what you seem to be saying with this point here is that, yes, those relationships are important, but you can't, that you have to build an inner, a sense of inner self before you do otherwise, you sacrifice yourself on the altar of relationships.
Speaker 2:
15:38 Exactly well said. That's exactly right If what you do is become yourself or mold yourself around, coming together not one person merging into another person. But in order to have two people come together, that means you first have to be a person with a self bringing something to the relationship. So what these skills do is they help you develop a confident and resilient self to bring to a relationship with another person and resilient self to bring to a relationship with another person.
Speaker 1:
16:24 And the other thing is another thing is also I prefaced that comment around people pleasing behavior is that it tends to be associated with close relationships Like you mentioned a mother-daughter piece there obviously with spouses. But it's also something that plays out in the workplace. I had a boss who always would do anything to please the ceo and which resulted in all sorts of other stuff happening. That wasn't terribly healthy. But when she quit, when she retired, everyone just piled on him and he was gone with within a month. Right because it, because his whole identity and his whole everything was hinged on her. So people please, that also happens in the workplace.
Speaker 2:
17:05 I see that a lot. I have a lot of people that I see in therapy where they come to me because they have these relationships with people that they work with, especially people that have customers or clients, sales people that are responsible, people that are in financial positions where they have customers that they're trying to please in order to manage their money and they're worried that they're going to lose those customers if they don't wine and dine them correctly or whatever. And then they notice that they have these kind of fluid relationships with them that can roll into a people pleasing situation where they start to resent these customers for certain things and the lines can start to get blurred around the relationship, and so definitely I think there's a lot of professions where this can become an issue if people aren't mindful about it moving on to next one, facing fears, where we, we all, have fears and I guess ignoring them and running away doesn't work, does it?
Speaker 2:
18:06 And here I'm not talking about boobies. I'm not talking about boobies of spiders and I'm not talking about running into traffic. What I'm talking about is doing something out of your comfort zone, because doing things out of our comfort zone is scary, but when you do something that's outside of your comfort zone, it can propel you forward in life, and that's very important. When you make friends with your fear and fear your co-captain in life or your sous chef in life, then that puts you right on the edge of your competency level instead of lagging behind your competency, and that continually reminds you then of what you're capable of and replaces self-doubt with self-confidence and satisfaction.
Speaker 2:
18:52 It doesn't matter how small or large the task is that you're using to break yourself out of your comfort zone, as long as it demonstrates to your brain that you're competent and capable instead of being avoided. So it can be as small as making a phone call that you're avoiding, or it can be a form that you haven't completed. The most important thing is that you say to your brain I'm not going to avoid this anymore. And then, as you build the confidence, you can move up a ladder of larger and larger fears. Yes, one of my clients was in private equity and she didn't like being in private equity, but it was terrifying to change careers to go into what she really wanted to do, which was social work. That would be a huge fear to face, but after some period of time she realized that her whole life was ahead of her and was she going to stay on something that she really didn't want to do or face her fears and make a leap, which she eventually did do and is much more satisfied doing being a social worker.
Speaker 1:
19:53 Yeah, I think it's interesting because a lot of the discussion around leadership, for instance, now focuses around, I think, two particular qualities that people want in leaders.
Speaker 1:
20:05 One is empathy. We all want our leaders to be empathetic and we want them to be authentic, and I think one of the sort of things that isn't given enough credit is courage. Is that that, that ability to go, let's say, step behind, beyond those sort of boundaries that you've been set for? You just set yourself and actually and again, that might not be, that's, I mean, I'll talk about a huge thing. I'm going to say a step beyond those sort of boundaries that you've either been set for or you've just set for yourself, and again, that might not be. I'm not talking about a huge thing, it's about going out and fighting a dragon or something like that. But some of the things in the case of business standing up for some of your principles, for instance can often involve an element of courage and overcoming fear, and those are clearly important to me, clearly not unrelated to your sense of self and being, and happiness and satisfaction, et cetera. So that seems like quite an important one for work as well as in the sort of activities of your private life.
Speaker 2:
20:55 I think that it is really important for work. I think it's really important for modeling for people for work. I also think it's really important for modeling for people, for their children. I think it's just important for modeling for people for work. I also think it's really important for modeling for people, for their children. I think it's just important for modeling to show that if you get too complacent or too comfortable, you're not continually showing yourself what you are able to do, and that complacency then interferes with your satisfaction and overall well-being.
Speaker 1:
21:22 I think it's a good point you make about children, because we tend to project our fears onto them, right? So it's things that we're scared. I've got a grandson who's just had his tonsils out, right, and his mother was really scared about that and it's no, don't communicate that. This is a fear-related activity. He's going to be for a five-year-old kid five six-year-old kid going in and being put to sleep. Having someone cut something out of your throat that could be a pretty scary thing, but it doesn't help, reinforcing those fears. So, yeah, it's also contagious among people, isn't it? Decision-making not one of my strong points, so that's actually facing fear, isn't either, but decision-making. So how does decision-making influence our sense of satisfaction?
Speaker 2:
22:12 Decisions-making is hard for so many people.
Speaker 2:
22:16 We struggle with decisions all of the time, whether it's choosing a restaurant because we're worried that our friends aren't going to like the restaurant that we chose, or sticking by a rule that our children can't go to a party unless the parents are home.
Speaker 2:
22:33 So, in order to avoid this, what we do is we delegate decisions to people that are around us to relieve us of the responsibility of blowback if the decision doesn't work out as we planned. We make an incredible 35,000 decisions every day, and the problem is that we see all those decisions as high stakes, right or wrong and irreversible. That creates an incredible amount of pressure. So it's critical that we learn to make decisions, and one of the ways to do that is to reduce the feelings that they're high pressure, recognize that there are no right or wrong decisions and recognize that they are almost all reversible, because there are so many decisions that we make all the time. What we don't realize is that decisions are actually just guesses Informed guesses, maybe, but we're all just guessing. Some people may guess with more experience, some people may guess with more education, but anybody that's suggesting to you that they're making a completely objective guess is not telling you the truth. Everybody is filtering their suggestions about how to live their lives through their own lens.
Speaker 1:
23:41 Yes.
Speaker 2:
23:42 Almost no decision in life is irreversible. All you're doing is making your best guess and if it doesn't turn out the way that you planned, there'll be a door to the next best solution, as long as you keep your mind open and flexible and creative. People change jobs, they switch careers, they move cities, they return cars. In saddest cases, they change marriages. In most cases, you can pivot. You can't pivot if you have a child, but besides that, in most cases you can pivot. So what we need to do is liberate ourselves from the idea that these decisions are so critical that we can't make them, and because we can't make them, we need to get.
Speaker 2:
24:30 give that responsibility to somebody else yeah because decision making builds ownership, confidence, accountability, confidence, self-reliance so many things that are important for life satisfaction yeah, because I'm reminded of my father, who lost his business quite late in his career.
Speaker 1:
24:48 He was 64 and his company went broke shortly before his 65th birthday. I remember him saying to me that it becomes so difficult because every he felt, every decision he had made had to be right. He couldn't afford a wrong decision because the business was on the edge. And so I associate that notion of almost paralysis that exists across the decision-making spectrum. Even if we're maybe not in a terribly stressful situation, nevertheless we're still investing too much importance in those individual decisions versus seeing them as being, let's say, choices that you make and can undo and redo and rethink if you want.
Speaker 2:
25:41 And in your father's case, unfortunately, the decision paralysis probably further eroded his confidence in a very terrible.
Speaker 1:
25:49 Yeah, his confidence was completely shot by the end.
Speaker 2:
25:51 Yes, exactly so then it becomes a never-ending cycle. Right, it's decision paralysis erodes the confidence more, which makes more decision paralysis, which erodes confidence more. The terrible never-ending cycle. Which is why actually making a decision helps build confidence Once you realize okay, if it turns out wrong, I have the confidence and the competence to pivot, find the next best solution and continue to move on, because I won't be in a room with no exit. There will be a solution, yeah.
Speaker 1:
26:21 Yeah, it's one of those things I've seen among the sort of, I think, more persistent ideas in business environment over the past few years is this idea of celebrating failure, of saying, you know, we shouldn't judge people by failure, we all fail, blah, blah, blah. And I get that. I think that makes perfect sense. But I just think that in some ways it's healthier to think of a bad decision as a mistake rather than a failure because, like, no matter how many times we tell people celebrate, failure carries with it a taint, carries with it a stigma which mistakes don't. It seems to be healthier to think of bad decisions as a mistake that you can put right. Right. A failure seems to be too much more existential kind of threats to me is that I think you can look at that decision as an opportunity yes, okay, yeah, okay I don't think you need to think of it as a mistake or a failure.
Speaker 2:
27:15 I think you can look at a bad decision as an opportunity, because it's it gives you the opportunity to pause and think creatively and flexibly about what another solution could be. And what you don't know when you're creating that next solution is I don't know and you don't know. Could the next solution end up turning out better than the one you had initially chosen? Who knows it could? There's no way. Nobody has a crystal ball to know whether the next best solution ends up being a better solution overall. We don't know. It turns into another opportunity. Has a crystal ball to know whether the next best solution is ends up being a better solution overall? We don't know it. It turns into another opportunity because we're guessing, yes, and because we're guessing, we don't know when we're guessing, how we're guessing no, I agree.
Speaker 1:
27:59 One of the phrases I've used a few times is there are no facts about the future, right, so we're all just shuffling along as best we can, which I think links to the next point you made and my, my, I might say my least favorite of your six points the need to finish things closing. Yeah. So what does that mean?
Speaker 2:
28:18 yeah, we live in a modern world where there are so many files open in our minds all the time, calls to be returned, appointments to be made, forms to be completed. Obviously, that is all paralyzing. The problem is that it's important to close out tasks because our brains are over-focused on what we don't close. It's called the Zagarnik effect. Our brains have far greater recall for the things that we have left undone than the things that we've completed. Many people may be able to relate to this example. If you haven't finished one email that was hard to complete, you're going to remember that more than the 10 emails that you did send. And that's because brains don't like to leave things undone. And then that contributes to imposter syndrome, negative self-esteem and lowered lifetime satisfaction. Closing out tasks then becomes critical for feelings of satisfaction and confidence. It's important to create strategies in order to close out tasks, and I give a lot of strategies in my books for all of these things, a lot of strategies.
Speaker 2:
29:29 But the most important thing is so. An example is a lot of times when we have tasks, what we do is we try, we look at them and they're large, with a large task to break it down into very small, manageable parts and be very honest with ourselves about how long it's going to take us to execute those manageable parts. And if we're incorrect about the timeframe we give ourselves, we need to pivot and change the timeframe and be honest with ourselves. The other thing is that a lot of times, the things on our list that we need to complete are things we don't want to do and we're never going to do because we don't want to do them, and we need to be honest with ourselves if we're never going to do them and delegate them yes as opposed to things on our list that we're not going to do and not delegating them because we think we should do them.
Speaker 1:
30:16 We need to get away from the shoulds and be authentic about what things on the list we're actually going to do right so do these two taken together around decision and closing relate in some way to the notion of regret, that that we can often look into our past? I wish I'd. I wish I'd done that and I could have taken a different path. So that's like questioning a decision that maybe you made, and also the idea that some something about that past is unfinished, that you have left paying there is, although do they relate to that? Something about that past is unfinished that you have left pain there. Do they relate to that? And is that a disturbance in the force for people wanting to feel satisfaction?
Speaker 2:
30:52 I think that it's more that people-pleasing, decision-making and closing are related, because I think, if you look at regret, a lot of times what happens is people don't follow through on decisions that they would make because they're afraid that the people in their lives will just be disappointed in a decision that they would want to make.
Speaker 2:
31:13 So they don't close out something that they would want to do because they feel like they shouldn't, because people in their lives will be disappointed if they would have, and so then they don't authentically follow through on things that they might want to.
Speaker 2:
31:29 Then they get closer and closer, later and later, to the end of later and later in their lives, and then they realize that they should have had the courage which is where Facing Fears comes in to do this authentic thing and not worry so much about what people would have thought and follow through on what it was that they authentically wanted to do, which is a lot of the point of this book, which is that, in order to avoid feeling regretful, how do you get the tools to face the fears, to not worry about the people in your life? Communicate with the people in your life about what you want to do in order to make this decision and close on it, so that you don't have regret, and that will help you feel satisfied overall. Okay, your point is well taken, but I do think the genesis of some of that starts with… it's that people-pleasing thing that makes sense.
Speaker 1:
32:21 So, lastly, active self-reinforcement and self-praise Right.
Speaker 2:
32:26 So we tend to delegate our self-reinforcement to an outside world that is fickle and unreliable. So self-reinforcement and self-care is extremely important for all of us. And that's not surprising because if you look at how we're brought up in terms of like participation trophies and this is how we're brought up we get participation trophies. We see people getting award ceremonies, all of these things we're socialized to see that people get external reinforcement for a job well done. So it's hard for us to then turn that around and say, oh, we're supposed to reinforce ourselves instead of get it from somebody else. But it's important to validate our worth instead and reclaim this job as our own, because then it becomes a reliable, positive feedback loop saying to your brain I will receive the reward now for effort expense, because I'm in charge of dispensing the reward.
Speaker 2:
33:32 How you do that is that you decide what the tangible reinforcers are that feel authentic to you, that you are going to apply to successful effort that you put, put in for something, not when somebody gives you praise, not when somebody gives you positive feedback, but I'm going to complete this task and when I complete this task I'm going to give myself this tangible reward that feels authentic to me for having completed this task. It doesn't have to be expensive. I'm not talking about giving yourself a cruise around the world. It can be as simple as buying yourself tickets to a game, to a movie, buying yourself flowers. It's just important that you follow through on giving yourself the tangible reinforcer as a reminder to your brain. I did this thing that I committed to doing, and now I'm reinforcing myself for completing this thing, and that motivates your brain to continue to do challenging things, because you're not sitting around waiting to be recognized by the outside world for your effort right.
Speaker 1:
34:32 so that relates, I think, very much, as you're describing it there, to the people-pleasing side, where we may invest a lot in pleasing people because we, we, we may be getting some modicum of positive feedback from them. And and I remember when I've been doing conferences for a long time and we don't tend to get net Now everyone gets an electronic survey after an event and no one really bothers filling them in, right? So you don't get a lot of feedback. And I also think people are reluctant to give bad feedback in that format because for some reason, so we used to everyone used to fill out forms at the table during events, so you'd get a lot of feedback. So you might get 40 comments about what you've done, 38 of which were positive, but you'd focus in on the two that were negative, or someone didn't like didn't like your accent, for instance.
Speaker 1:
35:15 I had that. I've had that comment if you didn't understand his accent, spoke too quickly or something like that. And those are the things you tend to. On the one hand, they're educated. You should notice them because they may be a cause to say, yeah, I could adjust that. But you can sometimes become a bit too focused on that negative from the outside people. So we're a little over our time, which I'm fine with. I'm sure our listeners will be. But I think you've given a great overview of those six things in your book and, I think, some really great practical advice. I did want to briefly chat about, about and I don't think we have much time, but certainly I know you're a big advocate of cbt and guided meditation.
Speaker 2:
35:50 You believe in those, obviously to support that sense of satisfaction yes yeah cognitive behavior therapy is important because in cognitive behavior therapy we teach people to combat cognitive distortions, and cognitive distortions can definitely negatively impact how we view the world.
Speaker 2:
36:12 An example of four very large cognitive distortions that people typically engage in. Thinking errors are fortune telling, magnification, minimization, all or none thinking they are what they sound like. Fortune telling is expecting bad things to happen. Magnification is making some small event very big in your mind. Minimization is ignoring positive events.
Speaker 2:
36:35 And all or none thinking is thinking in all or none terms, black and white thinking, without any gray areas, and the idea is to learn to balance those thoughts so that you're taking the, you're looking for more evidence and balancing them so that they're not interfering with your thoughts anymore and you're taking the error out of it. By doing that, it makes your thinking much more effective and creates fewer thought spirals. One of the strategies that we use in cognitive behavior therapy are thought-stopping techniques, like a rubber band technique that helps with thinking errors. Mindfulness techniques, meditation, relaxation techniques, box breathing, meditation, relaxation techniques, box breathing all of these things help relax people so that they can think as clearly as possible in order to be able to make most effective decisions, and not impulsively make decisions because a thought occurs and they feel like they need to act on the thought. This gives them time and space to think more clearly about what actions they want to take.
Speaker 1:
37:44 Great, I really appreciate you joining us today. I think one of the things that I found most valuable about this conversation is I've had a lot of conversations on, I say on human connection and loneliness lately and a lot of those people talk about, firstly, cultivating the connection with self being important, but they don't tend to, but they leave it there and they go off and chat about connections to other people. It seems to me that what you've described here around creating this sense of this maintainable sense of satisfaction, which is, in some ways, not just happiness, is very much about cultivating that connection that you need with yourself before you go into the outside world and relate to other people who are obviously important inputs into our well-being. Was that?
Speaker 1:
38:30 exactly am I, you said it perfectly good, because if you said no, I would have thought oh, oh dear, I obviously wasn't listening, I should have paid more attention no, thank you so much I really appreciate you joining us and hopefully our paths will cross in the real world one day soon, I hope.
Speaker 2:
38:45 Thank you, that would be great. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you to your audience.
Speaker 1:
38:49 Thank you.
