Three Lessons from Happiness Research | Emma Seppälä

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From abc this is the 10 happier podcast i'm dan
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harris hello hello you may have noticed that people in
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the mindfulness meditation world are often at pains to point
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out that what we're teaching is not a breathing exercise
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the goal is just to feel the breath as it
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naturally occurs if you've chosen the breath as the thing
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you want to focus on however And this is not
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something we've spent much time exploring on this show. There
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is a ton of evidence to suggest that actual breathing
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exercises can have powerful benefits physiologically and psychologically. That is
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one of the things we're going to talk about today
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with Emma Seppala, who is a lecturer at the Yale
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School of Management and faculty director of the Yale School
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of Management's Women's Leadership Program. She's also the science director
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of Stanford University's Center for Compassion and and altruism research
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and education. And she's the author of a book called
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The Happiness Track, How to Apply the Science of Happiness
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to Accelerate Your Success. As the title of today's episode suggests,
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we're going to talk about three big takeaways from happiness research.
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One has to do with the aforementioned breathing exercises. The
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other has to do with the power of nature to
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impact your mind. And the third has to do with
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social connections, something many of us are sorely lacking in
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this pandemic. One little audio note before we roll the interview.
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During this recording, my regular mic decided to crap out
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on me. So we had to call in a backup
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recording file. So the audio on my sound may not
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be as rich and baritone as normal, but it's totally fine.
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But just wanted to call that out before we get
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to it. So here we go now with Emma Seppala. Emma.
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Great to see you. Thanks for coming on.
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Thank you, Dan. It's nice to talk to you again.
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I know.
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I haven't seen you in a minute, so it's nice
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to see you. So many topics we're going to cover
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in this interview. You suggested we start, and I'm always
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happy to take your guidance since I know you and
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trust you. You suggested we start with what science is
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telling us about emotion regulation and resilience.
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Yeah.
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So what do we know?
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Well, I think it's been a big topic on a
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lot of people's minds this year, just given the amount
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of stressful stimuli that have been sent our way during
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the pandemic and beyond. And what's really interesting is, you know,
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no matter who you talk to from whatever country you
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sort of ask, like, what have you been taught to
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do with like your big, bad, negative emotions? Inevitably, people
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will say, well, bottle them up, stuff them down, suppress them,
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you know? That's kind of the general message that we've
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received in school, growing up, in the workplace, like you're
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not supposed to let your emotions out. And there's good
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reason not to always let your emotions out, obviously. You
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don't want to let your rage out in the workplace
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or something like that. But if you look at the
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research on suppression, which is what most people tend to do,
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you see that actually it makes things worse. So for example,
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if you're feeling angry, it already plays a number on
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your system, like heart rate increases, blood pressure increases, inflammation
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increases in your body, your stress response is activated. When
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you suppress, all of those systems actually increase in intensity.
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So anger already plays a number on your body, but
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when you suppress it, its negative impact becomes even worse.
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It's like shaking up a soda bottle. Does that make sense?
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It does, but you just said you don't want to
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let your rage out of the office. So what's the
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move other than to suppress it?
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Right? So it's really interesting. You know, another interesting thing
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about depression, just before I talk about that, is that,
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so let's say, why do people suppress? Because they're trying
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to maintain their relationships with other people, right? It's like,
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I'm not going to let my rage out. I'm just
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going to bottle it up so that I can maintain
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sort of a semblance of civility with this person that
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I'm talking to. But the problem is that, let's say
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I were suppressing rage right now and trying not to
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show it. your heart rate would increase. And you might
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not intellectually understand why, but you would start to feel
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uncomfortable around me. Our physiological empathic intelligence is far more
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rapid than our intellect can understand. So what happened there
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is that you would register the inauthenticity physiologically, and we
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register inauthenticity as threat. Do you see that? So it's
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so ironic, right? So we suppress our emotions to maintain
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our relationships, But when we suppress, the other person feels uncomfortable.
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I mean, I think we've all had that where you're
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around someone and you don't know why, but you feel uncomfortable. Like,
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I can't explain it. I just want to back away
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from this person. Chances are they're being inauthentic. You're registering
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as a threat. You want to back away. And if
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you look at the research on suppression and relationships, people
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who tend to suppress a lot, their relationships are negatively
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impacted over time. So what to do? I mean, I
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think you probably have heard about this a lot, Dan,
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the psychological impact research on reappraisal and sort of cognitive
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reframing of a situation. Looking at things from a different
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perspective is what most of the research has been conducted on,
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you know, sort of like you get the parking ticket
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and then you think, oh, well, I'm just going to
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consider this a donation to the city because I kind
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of like the city. So a lot of the research
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shows that really helps. It like decreases activation in the,
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you know, emotion centers of the brain. It helps you
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calm down, all of that good stuff. It's basically applying wisdom.
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to this situation. But, and this is something I kept
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bringing up because I was in an emotion regulation lab
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in grad school with an emotion regulation scholar who's one
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of the top scholars in the field. And I kept
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bringing up, what about when you're having really intense emotion?
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I think we've all been there. Have you ever tried
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to talk your way out of a really strong emotion?
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It doesn't really work, right?
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No, I mean, talking can be really helpful. but it
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doesn't make it go away per se if it's really strong,
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in my experience.
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You and I both have six-year-olds, and we can see, too,
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when they're in the middle of a tantrum, it's not
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a good time to sort of have a logical discussion
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about what's going on with them, right? It's like their
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emotion's so strong. So what happens at the level of
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the brain is when you can use reappraisal successfully, you're
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using your prefrontal cortex to kind of down-talk the emotion
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centers and calm down your body. But if the emotion
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is super strong or you're super stressed— then the emotion
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centers sort of are highly activated. What happens? You have
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less access to the reasoning capacities of your prefrontal cortex.
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It doesn't deactivate it, but it lowers your ability to
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use it. And that's why we can't talk ourselves out
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of like big rage, big anxiety, big fear, big sadness,
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big grief. In those moments, it doesn't help. And you
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know what's even worse? Have you ever had someone come
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up to you and say like, Oh, just calm down.
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Like, where are you?
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You're right.
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The worst. It's the worst.
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It doesn't work. So that's the big question, right? So
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then what the heck do we do at that moment?
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And so any ideas?
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Suppress. Is that the right answer? Yeah.
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So, you know, this has been really interesting to me
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because I was, I've always been, thought well there's got
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to be a different way because it doesn't work we
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can't use our intellect all the time and like psychologists
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are so top down like they just want to you
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know you should be able to think your way out
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of everything like i think therefore i am and all
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that it's like well it doesn't always work right so
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that's one of the reasons that i spent so much
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uh my research career looking at at breathing is what
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we've found is that when you can actually change your
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breath and calm your physiology then you regain access to
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your ability to think and That helps a lot. One
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of the stories that always comes to mind around this
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is that my husband walked into the room about seven
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years ago. I turned, I looked at his face and
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I was like, what's wrong? And he said, Jake was
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in an IED. And Jake is one of his best
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friends who was a Marine Corps officer in charge of
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a Humvee, the last Humvee in a convoy going across Afghanistan.
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And all the vehicles passed safely except his that drove
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over an improvised explosive device. He was in that moment
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of shock. You know, when sort of the dust settled
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and he could see and he looked down, his legs
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were almost completely severed underneath his knees. And I don't
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think we can even imagine what that feels like. Not
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just the excruciating pain, but like the shock, the pain,
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the noise, everything. But anyway, in that moment, he remembered
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something he'd read about in a book for officers about
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what to do in times of wartime crisis. And it
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had a very short and simple breathing exercise. And somehow,
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by some miracle, he remembered it. He started to engage
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in that breathing exercise. And because he did that, he
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was able to sort of regain the ability to think clearly,
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to do his first act of duty was to check
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on the other service members, which he did. And then
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his second act of duty was just to give orders
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to call for help. But it even gave him sort
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of that presence of mind to tourniquet his own legs
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and to think of propping them up. Then he fell unconscious,
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but he was later told he would have bled to
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death and died if he had not done that. And
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he's alive and well in the U.S. today. He has
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prosthetics on both his legs because he lost both of
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his lower legs. But That example is so profound to me.
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And one of the reasons I've been so inspired to
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do more research on that.
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So what does your research show around the value of
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deep breathing?
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So, I mean, just looking at first at the basic
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research on breathing. So when you breathe in, your heart
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rate increases and your blood pressure as well. When you
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breathe out, it decreases. So does your blood pressure. And actually,
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If you do a simple exercise where you're lengthening your exhales,
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like making them twice as long as your inhales, you're
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going to start to noticeably, if you were wearing a
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blood pressure cuff, you would see that your blood pressure
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starts to slow down. So what we're seeing is just
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at the physiological level, it is one of the most
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immediate effective techniques. that we can use to calm our body.
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And when you calm your body, you can again regain
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that ability to think clearly, which is our struggle when
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we have emotions, right? Because when we have those strong emotions,
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we can't always think clearly. Let's take anxiety, for example,
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or fear, which has just been so prevalent this year.
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If you're a lot in sort of a stress mode
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is that you perceive everything through the lens of fear,
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which can save your life in certain circumstances. But in
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other circumstances, it really restricts your vision, your perspective on
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what's possible, just your perspective in general, because we know
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that stress makes us very narrow in our perspective. The
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other thing is there's a study that looks at the
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impact of breathing on emotions. And so you've probably noticed this.
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I mean, you've probably noticed that your emotions change your breathing.
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I have noticed that. And I have noticed the opposite,
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that there was a recent guest we had on the
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show who mentioned something called straw breathing to me, just
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taking a deep breath in and then making sure the
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exhale is twice as long. And as you exhale, blow
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out as if you're blowing into a straw.
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Yeah.
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I actually now start every meditation session with that because
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I notice that my chest is usually tight. I'm breathing
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in a shallow way. And if I can just start,
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and I'll sometimes just do it through the day. I'll
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just try to do it surreptitiously. I may do it
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during this interview in a way that people can't see
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it because I just notice it changes my emotional state
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and it changes the way the body feels as well.
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So true. Makes so much sense to do before meditation too.
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One of my favorite studies looked at breathing and and emotions.
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So they had people come into the lab and they
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made them feel different emotions and they looked at the
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breathing pattern. And they saw for each of the emotions
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they evoked, the breathing was different. So you could think
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of examples, you know, like fear and anxiety or breath
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is faster. You know, if you think of little kids
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running in the sprinklers in the summer and they're deep
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breathing through their bellies, like joyful breathing, you know, sobbing, laughing,
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those are other examples of breath changes with emotions. So
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that's what they found, right? For each emotion, there was
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a different breathing. But I think the second part is
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the coolest part of the study. They had different people
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come in and they gave them the breathing instructions that
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corresponded to the emotion as seen in part one of
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the study.
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So they basically said, breathe in a way that would
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mimic how you might breathe if you were angry.
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Yeah, except they didn't tell them that. So they saw
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that like the anger breathing was like short and shallow
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and whatever the details were. So then they would bring
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the second group in and they had them breathe in
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that way. And then they asked them, how do you feel?
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Do you see? Yes. So what do you think they found?
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That you can change your breath and experience the emotion
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that is associated classically with that breathing stuff.
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Exactly. Yeah. I think this is a revolutionary study for
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me because it's so hard to change our emotions and
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it's so hard to talk our way out of our
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emotions when they're very overwhelming. But with our breath, we can.
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We live in a time and age when we want
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things to be fast, efficient, like tools that work. And
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this is probably one of the most efficient ways to
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change your physiology and thereby change the state of your
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mind and make you more resilient.
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So how do we do it? I mean, I described
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straw breathing. I hope I described it correctly. If we
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want to do some breathing exercises because we're sold, and
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I'm hard-pressed to imagine there are people who aren't sold, what.
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Do we do? Yeah, I mean, there's different ways. So,
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I mean, the breathing exercise you described is a nice one.
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But really, the simplest thing, if someone were just to
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take one thing away from this, the simplest thing is
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just to breathe out for twice as long as you
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breathe in, right? Wherever you are. But ideally, you do
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it with eyes closed. And the other thing, I mean,
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it's nice to learn a longer breathing practice, too, that
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you could just sort of do every day. A couple
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of research studies that we've run with a breathing protocol,
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for the first one was with veterans. And this is
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a number of years ago. But these are veterans with
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trauma who... for whom therapy and pharmaceuticals hadn't worked very
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well for their post-traumatic stress. And many of them were
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living in their basement, drinking, smoking pot, just to get
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to sleep at night. Like sometimes I'd ask them like,
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how's your sleep at night? And they would just laugh,
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you know, and they're just like, I just lie on
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the sofa, wait for the morning to come. It's just
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really intense. We were trying to figure out what kind
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of sort of practice can we teach them to calm
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them down. We were thinking of doing a mindfulness practice
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But then the VA we were collaborating with, they said,
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we're getting a lot of dropouts. People aren't sticking to
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the practice. So we thought maybe we should try a
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different approach that goes right into the physiology. And that's
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where we decided on a breathing protocol. So we did
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it one week, breathing protocol, sky breath meditation. They learn
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different forms of breathing and over the course of a week.
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And then we wanted to see what's the impact. And
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so what we saw was that the group that went
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through the class, as opposed to the control group, their
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anxiety normalized. And we even saw it physiologically because we
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had We measured their startle response. And we saw that
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the more they said that their anxiety normalized, the more
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we actually saw it physiologically. So they weren't just saying
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it to make us feel good. They were physiologically responding
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with less of a startle response, which is usually very
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elevated for people with trauma. And the surprising thing, though,
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was the one month and one year later, those results
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were maintained. So we weren't expecting that at all. But
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it's as if that breathing protocol had this sort of
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acute healing impact really on their trauma and We still
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don't really know how that works. But one thing we
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know is that memory is really malleable. And we know
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that anxiety and trauma in particular, it's like the memory
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of the past is still living in front of you,
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you know? And so you're not able to move forward,
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kind of like when you start a new relationship, but
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you're haunted by the old one. So when you engage
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in some breathing practices that relax you so deeply, sometimes
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those memories will come up. It did in the case
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of some of these veterans of memory would come up
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while they were in this very deeply relaxed state. But thereby,
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the relationship to the memory changes. Because usually, if that
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memory comes up, they would be in an anxious state,
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sweating back in the moment, right? But now it came
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up in a moment when they were in this deeply
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settled place. And we think that changes the relationship to
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the memory. And so that's what they would say a lot.
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They'd say, you know, I remember everything that happened, but
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I feel I can move on now. Yeah. Yeah, and
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then we ran a similar study this last couple of
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years at Yale with stressed undergrads, a different form of,
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a different population of anxious sort of, or prone to
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anxiety students. And we looked also at different wellbeing interventions
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and the one that had the strongest impacts was the
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sky breath meditation, the breathing practice. Again, we think because
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it goes that physiological level and thereby brings about that
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calming response in the body, in the mind as well.
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So you found... that sky breathing was more successful in
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reducing anxiety than traditional meditation?
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Yeah, so we looked at three different interventions. We had
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an emotional intelligence intervention, which is, it was just mostly
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a cognitive intervention. So, and the other one was a
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traditional mindfulness-based stress reduction program, and the third was sky
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breath meditation. If you looked at just the numbers, all
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of them benefit the students in some way, for sure.
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But when we looked at each group compared to the
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control group, the one that had... way more results was
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the breathing. We can only hypothesize as to why, but
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we think it's because there's something about going right into
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the physiology and triggering that calming response, triggering the parasympathetic
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nervous system, the rest and digest, that has a sort
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of profound psychological effect on stress resilience. Colleagues at Harvard
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also ran a similar study with a cognitive intervention and
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the sky breathing intervention. And they found that physiologically, when
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placed in a situation of stress, People had done the breathing,
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responded with less of a stress response to what was
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about to happen as opposed to the other group. So
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it's interesting. It's sort of a different approach. I think
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the traditional psychological approach is to go top down from
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the head and then regulate the body. And here we're
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looking at a different sort of paradigm about going through
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the body and then calming the mind.
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It's really interesting. Can you say a little bit about
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what sky breathing is?
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Sure. Sky breathing was taught for like 40 years or
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something like that. It's through the Vedic tradition, more yoga-based tradition.
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It was originally taught by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. And
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it's a series of breathing practices. So it includes some
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traditional pranayama, but also includes sort of the sky part,
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which is its rhythmic breathing practice that you can learn
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over like two or three days. I can just speak
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really from the scientific perspective is that it seems to
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have just a really powerful impact, especially for anxiety. And
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also there's some research on depression for it as well.
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So sky breathing is a breathing protocol, a skill that
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you have to acquire over a couple of days, as
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opposed to what you described earlier, which is anybody could
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do with no training, which is sit, close your eyes,
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and then just try to breathe in deeply and make
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sure the exhale is twice as long as the deep
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in breath.
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Exactly. So what I would recommend is that, you know,
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everyone sort of remember that they have this tool breathing
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in their back pocket that they can use anytime and
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lengthening their exhale is going to help, especially if they
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close their eyes, do it for five minutes, 15 minutes,
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going to start to really notice a settling in the system.
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And then if you want to go to like deeper
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or have, you know, struggle a lot with anxiety or
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sleep problems or trauma, things like that. And, you know,
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learning a breathing protocol is a really great next step.
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I find the notion of going right to the physiology
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to be really compelling. But I know you've studied Buddhism.
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I'm curious, I would imagine the Buddhist critique would be, yes,
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that's all incredibly important, which is why some schools of
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Buddhism do incorporate deep breathing as a way to calm
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the body and by extension, the mind down. However, if
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you really want freedom, you need to develop mindfulness and
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compassion and wisdom. You need to be able to see
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that everything is impermanent, that there's no solid self, and
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that often those insights give rise to a natural, uncontrived
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compassion for everybody who's suffering. Do you think that's a
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legitimate critique?
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Well, I don't think it necessarily would be a critique.
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I think it's a compliment, right? I think it's essential.
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You know, you can have all the breathing and mindfulness
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practices in the world, but if you don't engage with
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wisdom in some way, you won't have a way to
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frame your life, right? It's so critical. And we also
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know that the compassion aspect is so essential for wellbeing.
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There's just so much research showing that it's so, so essential,
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but it's also a natural by-product of having a more
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settled state of mind. Like you're, you are going to
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be more heartful when you are more mindful. I mean,
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we know that also from studies. I'm thinking of that
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one study that you probably have heard of where there
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were different meditations at practices that were compared to one
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another and to look at who is going to get
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up and help the person who's on crutches. Do you
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know the study I'm talking about? Yes, I do. And
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it didn't matter what kind of meditation they'd practice. Those
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who had practiced meditation were more likely to be compassionate.
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So really, I feel like compassion is a natural result
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of you being at your best self, which you are
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when you're in this more settled, mindful place. And I
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think the breathing practices are maybe a slightly different path
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to the same place. I know that for our study,
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mindfulness was one of the outcomes we measured. It was
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a strong outcome that That we studied with the Yale students,
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one of our outcomes was mindfulness and it was highly significant.
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So it was a result. And then also, you know,
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sometimes people feel like I've tried this type of meditation,
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but it didn't work for me. So I guess meditation
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doesn't work for me. And it's like, no, no, no, no.
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Like find the shoe that fits you. So I personally
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love meditation. I've been meditating for 15 years and I'm
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just so grateful for the practice. But one of the
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reasons I got interested in breathing to begin with is
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that I was in New York during 9-11. You were
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probably as well, right?
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Right after, on the day of 9-11, I was in
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Fort Wayne, Indiana, covering a story. And I drove directly
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to where Flight 93 went down in a field in Pennsylvania.
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Oh, my gosh. Okay.
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And then I went to New York.
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Yeah. So I'm glad you weren't there on the day.
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I had moved to New York two days prior. Wow.
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Yeah.
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Yeah. And I didn't understand why every single morning at 8.30
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after that, I had like such strong anxiety that I
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just didn't know what was happening to my body, honestly.
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And I found that breathing was what really helped. I
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tried so many things, including going to Bikram yoga, like
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every day. And I tried to sit and meditate, but
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I was too anxious. And so it was after learning
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to breathing that I noticed a real impact. And then
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I didn't think about it for many years until I
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started wanting to do research with veterans with trauma. But-
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That's why I always tell people, find the shoe that
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fits for you, but don't stop looking, if that makes sense,
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in terms of the contemplative practice that's going to help
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you most.
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I completely agree with the find the shoe that works
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for you. Don't stop looking. Do something. And I strongly believe,
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even as somebody who hasn't done sky breathing or any
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breathing protocol, that if that's all you do and you're
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a better person, a happier person because of it, great.
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The world is benefiting. Just going back to this, I
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called it a critique approach. from the Buddhists, and again,
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I'm not picking a side here personally, although maybe a little.
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You said it's a different way to get to the
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same thing, and I'm just wondering, could you, from deep breathing,
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get to the insights into emptiness and impermanence that is
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advertised in the Buddhist tradition?
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That's interesting. I mean, I've actually had this conversation before.
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With a couple of monks, one of whom is Geshe Damdol.
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I don't know if you know him. He is one
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of the Dalai Lama's translators. And I was asking him,
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and I was like, okay, what's the difference between the
480
00:23:46.730 --> 00:23:51.299
Vedic and the Buddhist tradition? And he said, it's so minute,
481
00:23:51.400 --> 00:23:55.359
it's almost non-existent. And I was like, okay. And he
482
00:23:55.400 --> 00:23:58.259
had actually tried this guy breath meditation. I'd asked him
483
00:23:58.299 --> 00:24:02.710
about it, and he said, it takes you to the
484
00:24:02.750 --> 00:24:05.430
space of... clarity, he says. And he was saying it
485
00:24:05.470 --> 00:24:07.529
takes you to a deep space of meditation. And I
486
00:24:07.549 --> 00:24:09.890
was sort of surprised he had learned that because I thought,
487
00:24:10.670 --> 00:24:13.819
I mean, he's a professional monk, he's a geishi. I mean,
488
00:24:14.039 --> 00:24:16.539
why would he learn a different practice? But he said
489
00:24:16.579 --> 00:24:19.440
he had been curious and he was very open and
490
00:24:19.559 --> 00:24:20.410
childlike about it.
491
00:24:21.680 --> 00:24:25.440
Yeah, I think openness and the right meaning of the
492
00:24:25.460 --> 00:24:31.039
term childlike, not like our six-year-olds at their worst, childlike,
493
00:24:31.079 --> 00:24:34.240
but yeah, the positive aspects of being a child. I
494
00:24:34.259 --> 00:24:38.160
aspire to both of those. So consider me open. Just
495
00:24:38.180 --> 00:24:40.099
going back to the top of this discussion, we were
496
00:24:40.160 --> 00:24:45.250
talking about emotion regulation and cognitive reframing can work, but
497
00:24:45.309 --> 00:24:49.069
for really powerful ones, breathing can be a way to
498
00:24:49.109 --> 00:24:53.349
short circuit the cognitive capacities that might be degraded by
499
00:24:53.609 --> 00:24:56.990
the limbic or amygdala activation that can come from a
500
00:24:57.049 --> 00:24:57.910
powerful emotion.
501
00:24:59.380 --> 00:25:02.819
That's super well said, Dan. And also, you know, you
502
00:25:02.839 --> 00:25:05.220
were talking about wisdom. And I think of reappraisal as
503
00:25:05.240 --> 00:25:07.720
like trying to apply wisdom, right? And so in those
504
00:25:07.779 --> 00:25:10.380
moments when you can't apply wisdom because you are freaking
505
00:25:10.539 --> 00:25:13.480
out or you're really triggered, you have really been pushed
506
00:25:13.509 --> 00:25:15.970
your buttons or you're completely out of your comfort zone,
507
00:25:16.630 --> 00:25:18.390
how do you apply wisdom? You know, sometimes you can
508
00:25:18.430 --> 00:25:21.490
feel like, oh gosh, I'm so like, I've learned all
509
00:25:21.509 --> 00:25:23.990
these things. I've read all these things. I've heard all
510
00:25:24.029 --> 00:25:25.869
this wisdom and look at me now. I have no
511
00:25:25.990 --> 00:25:30.200
better than my six-year-old, you know? Those moments trying to
512
00:25:30.220 --> 00:25:32.759
go into, you know, calming your physiology so that you
513
00:25:32.779 --> 00:25:37.200
could try and regain access to that wisdom. That's how
514
00:25:37.220 --> 00:25:37.700
I can think of it.
515
00:25:38.359 --> 00:25:40.640
Yeah, I think that's great. And I like thinking of
516
00:25:40.700 --> 00:25:43.900
it that way. And I just, again, my limited exploration
517
00:25:43.920 --> 00:25:47.299
of this straw breathing and both formally for a few
518
00:25:47.319 --> 00:25:49.160
minutes before I start practice and just, you know, in
519
00:25:49.180 --> 00:25:52.180
a free range way throughout the day has been really nice.
520
00:25:54.240 --> 00:25:56.769
Much more of my conversation with Emma Seppala right after this.
521
00:26:01.599 --> 00:26:03.160
Where I was going by going back to the top
522
00:26:03.200 --> 00:26:06.640
of the conversation is there was a word that had
523
00:26:06.700 --> 00:26:08.819
also come up when we were talking about emotion regulation,
524
00:26:08.859 --> 00:26:11.759
which I'm wondering if it's the same concept or a
525
00:26:11.839 --> 00:26:16.069
different concept, which is resiliency. Is resiliency the same thing
526
00:26:16.109 --> 00:26:18.890
as being able to ride your emotions without being swamped
527
00:26:18.930 --> 00:26:20.690
by them? Or is that a different skill?
528
00:26:21.230 --> 00:26:25.589
That's such a wonderful question. I think emotion regulation is
529
00:26:25.829 --> 00:26:29.630
part of it. But resilience is also, from a physiological
530
00:26:29.670 --> 00:26:32.630
point of view, is how quickly, and also probably from
531
00:26:32.670 --> 00:26:37.160
a wisdom perspective, how quickly can you bounce back from
532
00:26:37.200 --> 00:26:39.000
whatever just happened to you? So things are going to
533
00:26:39.019 --> 00:26:40.680
happen to all of us. They happen to us all
534
00:26:40.700 --> 00:26:43.700
the time. They're going to continue happening to us. How
535
00:26:43.839 --> 00:26:46.299
quickly do we come back? How quickly do we get
536
00:26:46.380 --> 00:26:50.480
out of the, maybe the drama in our own minds,
537
00:26:51.119 --> 00:26:53.640
all of the moods and whatnot? And I think that's
538
00:26:53.660 --> 00:26:57.519
where contemplative practices can be so powerful. But it has
539
00:26:57.579 --> 00:27:00.960
a physiological component, it has a psychological component, and it
540
00:27:01.000 --> 00:27:03.420
has an intellectual or wisdom component, I would say.
541
00:27:05.380 --> 00:27:11.369
So training and resilience can include, but is not limited to,
542
00:27:12.470 --> 00:27:13.329
emotion regulation.
543
00:27:14.170 --> 00:27:21.670
Yeah, I think meditation, breathing, yoga, and any, really, any
544
00:27:21.799 --> 00:27:26.140
activity that brings you back trains your parasympathetic nervous system.
545
00:27:26.180 --> 00:27:29.450
So I think that we're so used to training our
546
00:27:29.630 --> 00:27:33.470
sympathetic nervous system in our society, in our culture. We
547
00:27:33.509 --> 00:27:36.539
complain about stress and we worship at the temple of stress.
548
00:27:36.730 --> 00:27:40.720
You know, I can't be productive unless I pump my
549
00:27:40.740 --> 00:27:44.380
adrenaline up. I drink more coffee. I do the overschedule myself.
550
00:27:44.619 --> 00:27:46.380
I wait till the last minute to get things done.
551
00:27:46.839 --> 00:27:49.180
You know, it's sort of this misconception that's out there
552
00:27:49.579 --> 00:27:52.680
that productivity equals being in this high adrenaline rush. And
553
00:27:52.720 --> 00:27:55.990
it's the reason people are so burnt out. 50% of
554
00:27:56.009 --> 00:27:59.690
people are burnout across industries. In the workplace, 75% of
555
00:27:59.710 --> 00:28:05.849
people are disengaged, disengaged. We're facing a real problem. But
556
00:28:06.630 --> 00:28:11.009
the question is why? We are constantly in this sort
557
00:28:11.049 --> 00:28:15.009
of love-hate relationship with stress, and it's not serving us, right?
558
00:28:15.069 --> 00:28:18.099
So there's a stress researcher at Stanford called Bob Sapolsky.
559
00:28:18.160 --> 00:28:19.769
Have you heard of him? I have.
560
00:28:20.130 --> 00:28:23.009
Did he write Why Zebras Don't Get Depressed or something?
561
00:28:23.049 --> 00:28:23.910
Don't Get Ulcers.
562
00:28:24.390 --> 00:28:24.789
Okay, yeah.
563
00:28:24.890 --> 00:28:27.210
It's such a great title, right? So, you know, I
564
00:28:27.349 --> 00:28:30.890
remember him saying once, you're supposed to feel stressed five
565
00:28:30.930 --> 00:28:33.079
minutes in your life right before you die. That's it.
566
00:28:33.079 --> 00:28:35.480
Sort of the idea that, you know, you're being chased
567
00:28:35.500 --> 00:28:37.759
by a predator and you're about to die. And in
568
00:28:37.799 --> 00:28:40.720
that moment, your stress response kicks in to save your life, right?
569
00:28:40.740 --> 00:28:43.799
To blood to your muscles, to pump your immune system,
570
00:28:44.119 --> 00:28:46.839
to get you really sharp cognitively so you can save
571
00:28:46.859 --> 00:28:50.039
your life. And then you either die or if your
572
00:28:50.079 --> 00:28:52.640
life is saved, you go right back to grazing like
573
00:28:52.839 --> 00:28:58.230
nothing happened to you. You know, very relaxed. Why? Because
574
00:28:58.269 --> 00:29:02.450
in that parasympathetic, extremely relaxed state is where you rebuild yourself.
575
00:29:02.750 --> 00:29:08.349
You regain your resources. It's so powerfully restorative for your body.
576
00:29:08.849 --> 00:29:14.200
And yet we're overly trained in activating our sympathetic nervous system.
577
00:29:14.240 --> 00:29:16.940
We're not trained in the parasympathetic, which is like, you know,
578
00:29:16.960 --> 00:29:20.029
and then there's a reliance on alcohol or other ways
579
00:29:20.069 --> 00:29:23.069
to just sort of bring yourself back down. And yet
580
00:29:23.089 --> 00:29:26.490
that then comes with other problems. So I would say
581
00:29:27.130 --> 00:29:29.829
that's a really interesting phenomenon that's happening. And I think
582
00:29:30.230 --> 00:29:32.170
that may be one of the reasons meditation has become
583
00:29:32.230 --> 00:29:34.869
so popular. We live in a time of extreme sort
584
00:29:34.890 --> 00:29:37.250
of stress and extreme activity. And so we need an
585
00:29:37.309 --> 00:29:40.339
extreme activity to balance that, which is doing nothing.
586
00:29:41.599 --> 00:29:44.059
I'm so glad to have you here because there's so
587
00:29:44.119 --> 00:29:47.700
much ground we can cover when it comes to, as
588
00:29:47.720 --> 00:29:50.259
you said before, bringing yourself down, but in a good way,
589
00:29:50.339 --> 00:29:54.619
bring yourself out of your head, out of the dysregulation.
590
00:29:55.079 --> 00:29:57.279
And I know you've spent some time looking at the
591
00:29:57.319 --> 00:30:00.950
research around a modality that we haven't yet discussed, which
592
00:30:01.089 --> 00:30:04.690
is access to and exposure to nature. What have you
593
00:30:04.730 --> 00:30:06.150
learned in that zone?
594
00:30:07.269 --> 00:30:09.250
Thanks for bringing it up. One of my favorite topics
595
00:30:09.309 --> 00:30:12.049
of all time. I mean, I think, you know, if
596
00:30:12.069 --> 00:30:15.190
you think about our ancestors, we lived in nature with
597
00:30:15.309 --> 00:30:19.619
nature constantly. It has an enormous amount of benefits for us.
598
00:30:19.640 --> 00:30:24.000
So any exposure to nature benefits your psychological health. It
599
00:30:24.019 --> 00:30:27.769
also benefits your cognitive abilities of attention and focus. It
600
00:30:27.809 --> 00:30:32.730
benefits your compassion and empathy toward others. It also benefits
601
00:30:32.769 --> 00:30:35.089
your ability to innovate. Now, if you look at across countries,
602
00:30:35.130 --> 00:30:38.940
across industries, what's the number one trait that leaders look
603
00:30:38.980 --> 00:30:41.980
for in incoming employees? It's the ability to be creative.
604
00:30:42.059 --> 00:30:44.920
And we all have that. If you go out into
605
00:30:44.960 --> 00:30:48.460
nature for three days unplugged, you come back with 50%
606
00:30:48.460 --> 00:30:49.619
more creativity. 50%! Huge!
607
00:30:49.819 --> 00:30:51.589
That's amazing.
608
00:30:51.730 --> 00:30:54.009
Just think about how creative our, you know, with all
609
00:30:54.029 --> 00:30:56.880
the problems we're dealing with in our world, wow, if
610
00:30:56.960 --> 00:31:00.400
everyone had access to 50% more of their creativity, there
611
00:31:00.420 --> 00:31:02.839
would be a lot more solutions coming up for us, right?
612
00:31:03.539 --> 00:31:05.640
By the way, when we worship at that temple of stress,
613
00:31:06.269 --> 00:31:08.170
when you're in a stress state, you don't activate your
614
00:31:08.210 --> 00:31:11.170
innovative potential, by the way. Because if you look at
615
00:31:11.190 --> 00:31:15.250
the brain's ability to come up with aha solutions or creative,
616
00:31:15.470 --> 00:31:19.660
innovative solutions for problems, when does that happen? Just for you, Dan,
617
00:31:19.700 --> 00:31:20.980
if you think about it, when do you come up
618
00:31:21.019 --> 00:31:22.000
with your best ideas?
619
00:31:22.900 --> 00:31:25.819
Well, I've only recently seen the wisdom in what you're saying,
620
00:31:25.880 --> 00:31:30.119
which is because I've long believed that in particular for writing,
621
00:31:30.140 --> 00:31:32.819
I needed to just, you know, nose to the grindstone,
622
00:31:32.920 --> 00:31:35.839
hammer away at it, hammer away at it, completely ignoring
623
00:31:35.859 --> 00:31:38.039
the fact that my best ideas always come on meditation
624
00:31:38.079 --> 00:31:41.700
retreat or, you know, in the shower or some relaxed moment.
625
00:31:42.240 --> 00:31:45.160
And so I'm in the process now of retraining the
626
00:31:45.220 --> 00:31:48.769
way I work and putting in a lot more meditation
627
00:31:48.809 --> 00:31:51.950
sessions and playing with a cat or my kid in
628
00:31:51.970 --> 00:31:55.470
the middle of work because the work is better. I'm
629
00:31:55.569 --> 00:31:56.309
less miserable.
630
00:31:57.089 --> 00:32:00.109
It's so true, right? And if you look at the
631
00:32:00.690 --> 00:32:04.549
research on this, neuroscientists looked at when do people come
632
00:32:04.569 --> 00:32:06.519
up with these aha moments, like you were saying, like
633
00:32:06.539 --> 00:32:08.619
in the shower or playing with your cat or taking
634
00:32:08.660 --> 00:32:13.200
a walk. And what they found was that Those innovative
635
00:32:13.259 --> 00:32:15.480
ideas come when your brain is in alpha wave mode.
636
00:32:15.759 --> 00:32:20.819
So that means it's not intensely focused and it's not so, so, so,
637
00:32:20.940 --> 00:32:23.619
you know, relaxed that it's almost asleep. It's in that
638
00:32:23.640 --> 00:32:25.619
in-between mode, which you could think of as a meditative
639
00:32:25.640 --> 00:32:28.869
state of mind. And that's when we get our aha moments.
640
00:32:28.900 --> 00:32:30.509
And that's why people will get them in the shower.
641
00:32:30.529 --> 00:32:32.210
That's why people get them while they're jogging or while
642
00:32:32.230 --> 00:32:34.849
they're out or while they're not intensely focused on anything.
643
00:32:35.650 --> 00:32:37.890
It's interesting again, right? We live in this society where
644
00:32:38.109 --> 00:32:40.670
if you're not being productive every moment of the day,
645
00:32:40.950 --> 00:32:43.930
you're wasting your time, right? That is an idea that's
646
00:32:44.009 --> 00:32:46.089
out there. People, even when they're not at work, they're
647
00:32:46.109 --> 00:32:47.869
thinking about work. I should be doing this. I should
648
00:32:47.910 --> 00:32:50.819
be doing that. But when you are taking time off
649
00:32:50.950 --> 00:32:54.700
to be idle, to be relaxed, your brain is in
650
00:32:54.799 --> 00:32:58.740
active problem-solving mode. So I hope everyone can remember that.
651
00:32:59.259 --> 00:33:01.880
Next time they take a day off or take a vacation,
652
00:33:02.339 --> 00:33:05.299
your brain's in active problem-solving mode. Give yourself a break already.
653
00:33:06.170 --> 00:33:09.440
This is a fascinating thing about nature is that some
654
00:33:09.460 --> 00:33:10.779
people are like, well, I live in a city and
655
00:33:10.799 --> 00:33:12.500
it's a pandemic. Like, what am I supposed to do?
656
00:33:12.539 --> 00:33:15.119
I can't go anywhere. It doesn't matter. If you can
657
00:33:15.160 --> 00:33:17.859
go to your little city park, it has similar impact.
658
00:33:17.880 --> 00:33:19.880
You can't go to a city park. There's no park
659
00:33:19.920 --> 00:33:22.119
near you. Okay. Well, if you have, you know, like
660
00:33:22.160 --> 00:33:25.470
a plant on your desk, it has an impact. And
661
00:33:25.509 --> 00:33:27.730
let's say you have no windows, no plants. Okay. So
662
00:33:27.829 --> 00:33:30.150
even if you have a picture of nature on your
663
00:33:30.190 --> 00:33:34.230
wall or on your screensaver, it has an impact. And
664
00:33:34.250 --> 00:33:37.089
that's just how profoundly connected we are to nature, even
665
00:33:37.109 --> 00:33:39.960
though many of us have sort of lost that connection.
666
00:33:40.359 --> 00:33:43.980
But it has that profound of a psychological, physiological impact
667
00:33:44.220 --> 00:33:46.720
on you to be exposed in any manner whatsoever.
668
00:33:48.650 --> 00:33:50.230
Just say you live in the city and you're in
669
00:33:50.269 --> 00:33:52.789
an area where there's not a lot of parks around.
670
00:33:53.490 --> 00:33:56.269
Just walking outside, I would imagine. I've noticed that walking...
671
00:33:56.650 --> 00:33:59.470
The moment I walked out of ABC News, back when
672
00:33:59.490 --> 00:34:02.039
I used to go to the office, I always felt better.
673
00:34:02.119 --> 00:34:04.019
That's not a knock on ABC News. It just means
674
00:34:04.079 --> 00:34:08.000
it's sitting indoors all day. I would become hyper-focused on
675
00:34:08.039 --> 00:34:11.119
my issues. Soon as I hit the outdoors, and it
676
00:34:11.159 --> 00:34:15.059
wasn't nature outdoors, it was 67th Street in Manhattan, I
677
00:34:15.139 --> 00:34:16.280
felt better. Yeah.
678
00:34:16.760 --> 00:34:19.849
No, absolutely. Having visited you a couple times in those studios,
679
00:34:19.869 --> 00:34:22.650
there were also not many windows, if any, right? So...
680
00:34:23.199 --> 00:34:25.460
That as well, you know, being able to just get
681
00:34:25.500 --> 00:34:28.780
outside and being exposed to natural light and so forth
682
00:34:28.820 --> 00:34:29.699
has a huge impact.
683
00:34:30.780 --> 00:34:33.239
You said before that spending three days in nature had
684
00:34:33.260 --> 00:34:37.349
a 50% increase on creativity. Does that mean you need
685
00:34:37.389 --> 00:34:39.530
to literally be sleeping in a tent or can you
686
00:34:39.570 --> 00:34:42.630
just be in a place where you're outdoors much of
687
00:34:42.690 --> 00:34:43.070
the day?
688
00:34:43.869 --> 00:34:45.409
I think it had to do with just being outdoors
689
00:34:45.469 --> 00:34:48.070
much of the day, but also being unplugged. So you
690
00:34:48.090 --> 00:34:49.949
could be sitting in nature and staring down at your
691
00:34:49.969 --> 00:34:52.269
phone the whole time, right? So that's not the idea.
692
00:34:52.289 --> 00:34:56.349
They were literally unplugged. And so your mind can become
693
00:34:56.369 --> 00:34:58.699
so much more expanded and access so much more of
694
00:34:58.719 --> 00:35:02.219
your creativity that when it's narrowly focused through sort of
695
00:35:02.300 --> 00:35:05.699
intense concentration that we do, even when people have time off, right?
696
00:35:05.739 --> 00:35:08.539
They're on their phones scrolling through social media. That's still
697
00:35:08.579 --> 00:35:12.480
intense concentration. You're still not allowing your mind to access
698
00:35:13.039 --> 00:35:16.110
other parts of its consciousness, other parts of its abilities
699
00:35:16.219 --> 00:35:19.849
to capture ideas in novel ways.
700
00:35:20.889 --> 00:35:25.019
I mean, I have been bowled over by the amount
701
00:35:25.420 --> 00:35:32.070
of creativity that comes unsummoned, unbidden, often unwanted while on
702
00:35:32.130 --> 00:35:35.130
meditation retreat, just, you know, cause I'm, I have a
703
00:35:35.190 --> 00:35:38.300
ton of time in nature. I'm letting my mind, you know,
704
00:35:38.340 --> 00:35:40.179
there's a certain amount of training of the mind that's
705
00:35:40.219 --> 00:35:42.199
going on, but at some point you get to the
706
00:35:42.239 --> 00:35:43.679
top of the hill and you're just kind of rolling
707
00:35:43.719 --> 00:35:46.239
down and it's, you're not working as hard. And that's
708
00:35:46.340 --> 00:35:49.139
when really interesting things happen. I have had the experience
709
00:35:49.179 --> 00:35:50.860
of coming home from retreat and looking at my notes
710
00:35:50.900 --> 00:35:54.340
and it's complete nonsense, but more often than not, actually
711
00:35:54.400 --> 00:35:56.730
my best ideas have come in that context.
712
00:35:57.449 --> 00:35:58.670
I don't know if you know the story of the
713
00:35:58.809 --> 00:36:01.170
Beatles and how they, the creativity.
714
00:36:01.769 --> 00:36:02.750
Yeah, tell it, please.
715
00:36:02.769 --> 00:36:06.739
Yeah, I've heard this story, but that they asked, the
716
00:36:06.760 --> 00:36:09.909
Beatles were, you know, meditating with Maharishi in India, and
717
00:36:10.010 --> 00:36:13.309
they asked him, hey, like all these song lyrics are,
718
00:36:13.409 --> 00:36:15.929
I don't remember which, who asked it, but... all these
719
00:36:15.989 --> 00:36:18.599
song lyrics are coming while I'm meditating. What do I do?
720
00:36:18.659 --> 00:36:20.199
And he said, you open your eyes, you write down
721
00:36:20.219 --> 00:36:23.400
the lyrics, you close your eyes, keep meditating. And so
722
00:36:23.420 --> 00:36:25.099
now I don't feel bad when I do. Sometimes I
723
00:36:25.139 --> 00:36:26.719
do that too, because I'm just like you, like I
724
00:36:26.739 --> 00:36:29.699
get so many ideas. Sometimes whole articles will come to
725
00:36:29.739 --> 00:36:31.969
me while I'm meditating. I'm like, I'm not going to
726
00:36:32.010 --> 00:36:35.030
sit down and write it. I'm meditating. But my book,
727
00:36:35.230 --> 00:36:38.269
The Happiness Track, I just, it was on the hills
728
00:36:38.329 --> 00:36:41.090
of San Clemente where I was living. I was hiking
729
00:36:41.130 --> 00:36:42.960
every day and the whole chapter would just come to
730
00:36:42.980 --> 00:36:45.269
me and I'd go back home and write it. I
731
00:36:45.289 --> 00:36:47.650
think we've, you know, probably everyone has had that experience
732
00:36:47.730 --> 00:36:49.329
of just, you know, how am I going to get
733
00:36:49.369 --> 00:36:50.329
my kid to eat vegetables?
734
00:36:50.829 --> 00:36:50.949
Aha!
735
00:36:50.989 --> 00:36:54.429
You know, while you're jogging or whatever, you just realize
736
00:36:54.469 --> 00:36:55.869
I'm going to make this recipe or I'm going to
737
00:36:55.889 --> 00:36:56.250
do this.
738
00:36:57.550 --> 00:36:59.230
I have other things I want to ask you about,
739
00:36:59.269 --> 00:37:03.360
but before we leave nature, are there other areas to
740
00:37:03.409 --> 00:37:05.579
explore here that I've failed to guide us to?
741
00:37:06.300 --> 00:37:09.260
There's some really interesting books I would recommend. There's a
742
00:37:09.280 --> 00:37:11.320
book by Florence Williams, which is more recent, called The
743
00:37:11.360 --> 00:37:14.780
Nature Fix, where she talks, she summarizes the research quite nicely.
744
00:37:15.480 --> 00:37:17.639
Richard Louv wrote a book called The Last Child in
745
00:37:17.659 --> 00:37:19.429
the Woods, which is a bit of a classic. It's
746
00:37:19.449 --> 00:37:22.530
sort of a sad title, but really reminds us of like,
747
00:37:23.010 --> 00:37:25.570
how are our kids growing up? Are they being exposed
748
00:37:25.590 --> 00:37:27.750
to nature? Like, what is their world? Is it just
749
00:37:27.809 --> 00:37:31.030
always concrete? Is it always a screen? Like, what could
750
00:37:31.050 --> 00:37:34.090
we do for our children if we were to bring
751
00:37:34.110 --> 00:37:35.980
them into nature? What would we do for our family
752
00:37:36.059 --> 00:37:37.619
if we spent time in nature as a family? You know,
753
00:37:38.139 --> 00:37:40.019
so there's some really great books out there to explore.
754
00:37:40.059 --> 00:37:41.619
And I think especially in the last couple of years,
755
00:37:41.659 --> 00:37:44.500
some wonderful new books on nature have that I really
756
00:37:44.519 --> 00:37:46.760
highly recommend reading. I've found that when I read them,
757
00:37:47.460 --> 00:37:49.960
it's very relaxing just to read about it. The reason
758
00:37:49.980 --> 00:37:52.039
I'm recommending this is that you're not going to read
759
00:37:52.059 --> 00:37:55.139
about this that much in the public sort of spheres
760
00:37:55.219 --> 00:37:58.889
and sort of popular journalism. And the reason is that
761
00:37:59.030 --> 00:38:03.090
there's no PR agent out there pushing nature research on
762
00:38:03.150 --> 00:38:05.130
people because no one's going to make money off of it.
763
00:38:05.150 --> 00:38:06.909
So no one's paying a PR agent to do this.
764
00:38:06.949 --> 00:38:09.849
You're not going to see the articles, right? But do
765
00:38:09.889 --> 00:38:11.989
it for your own sake. Explore that topic for your
766
00:38:12.010 --> 00:38:14.909
own sake, I would say. Because it is so profoundly
767
00:38:14.969 --> 00:38:16.760
healing for humans to be in nature.
768
00:38:17.559 --> 00:38:20.400
Again, this does not require, you know, buying new boots or,
769
00:38:20.579 --> 00:38:22.320
you know, getting on a plane. It can be just
770
00:38:22.360 --> 00:38:25.079
going to the local park, taking a walk in your neighborhood.
771
00:38:26.300 --> 00:38:28.510
Plants in your house. So I don't know if you've
772
00:38:28.530 --> 00:38:30.510
gone to a plant store recently, but when you go,
773
00:38:30.530 --> 00:38:32.849
when I've gone out, they're just like, oh, we're constantly
774
00:38:32.869 --> 00:38:35.210
getting sold out because of the pandemic and people staying home.
775
00:38:35.670 --> 00:38:38.329
They're turning their apartment into a little jungle. Why not?
776
00:38:39.030 --> 00:38:42.309
I love it. Okay, so the next area to discuss
777
00:38:42.349 --> 00:38:44.710
in terms of what the science is telling us about
778
00:38:44.750 --> 00:38:48.429
human flourishing is social connection. What are you seeing there
779
00:38:48.489 --> 00:38:50.710
that's of interest right now? Obviously, we're at a time
780
00:38:50.750 --> 00:38:53.530
where I don't think it's a, we've run this global
781
00:38:53.570 --> 00:38:57.579
unregulated experiment on ourselves. What happens when you reduce social
782
00:38:58.039 --> 00:39:01.780
connection in a pandemic? And I do not think it
783
00:39:01.920 --> 00:39:06.460
is a coincidence that we see spiking anxiety, depression, addiction,
784
00:39:06.500 --> 00:39:09.800
and suicide. So clearly, this is a pressing issue right now.
785
00:39:09.840 --> 00:39:12.960
And perhaps, And this is somewhat optimistic. I hope we
786
00:39:13.019 --> 00:39:15.619
take this lesson away from the pandemic that we need
787
00:39:15.679 --> 00:39:18.579
each other. But what's interesting to you in this realm
788
00:39:18.679 --> 00:39:19.239
these days?
789
00:39:21.030 --> 00:39:24.050
Well, we've known for many decades that social connections are
790
00:39:24.130 --> 00:39:26.690
greatest need after food and shelter, like period. It is
791
00:39:26.789 --> 00:39:29.929
our greatest need for psychological health, physical health, for longevity.
792
00:39:30.820 --> 00:39:33.400
We've known that for decades. And we've also known even
793
00:39:33.460 --> 00:39:36.539
pre-pandemic that there's a loneliness epidemic that has been going
794
00:39:36.559 --> 00:39:38.699
around the world. In the UK, they even have a
795
00:39:38.739 --> 00:39:42.690
ministry for loneliness. There's even some scientists looking into developing
796
00:39:42.730 --> 00:39:47.880
a pharmaceutical intervention for loneliness. I mean... That was pre-pandemic.
797
00:39:48.139 --> 00:39:50.480
And so here we are. And like you said, global
798
00:39:50.519 --> 00:39:53.920
unregulated experiment. I think a lot of people have suffered
799
00:39:53.960 --> 00:39:57.159
obviously from this. So here's the good news, I guess,
800
00:39:57.219 --> 00:39:59.320
from a research perspective is that when you look at
801
00:39:59.340 --> 00:40:01.929
the research that shows, you know, all of the negative
802
00:40:01.949 --> 00:40:05.210
impacts of loneliness, which are actually quite severe, loneliness is
803
00:40:05.409 --> 00:40:09.190
worse for your health outcomes than smoking, obesity, and high
804
00:40:09.210 --> 00:40:12.010
blood pressure. And when you look at the research on
805
00:40:12.050 --> 00:40:16.650
social connection, and all of its enormous benefits for psychological health,
806
00:40:16.889 --> 00:40:20.409
physical health, immunity, recovery from disease, longevity, and so forth.
807
00:40:21.309 --> 00:40:23.909
If you look at what about it, what about the
808
00:40:23.949 --> 00:40:27.139
connection leads to those benefits, or what about the feeling
809
00:40:27.179 --> 00:40:30.400
of disconnection leads to the negative impact, it actually has
810
00:40:30.460 --> 00:40:32.579
nothing to do with how many people you are around
811
00:40:32.639 --> 00:40:35.599
every day. That's the good news. It has everything to
812
00:40:35.619 --> 00:40:38.659
do with how connected you feel on the inside. What
813
00:40:38.719 --> 00:40:41.230
predicts all of the things that the research has shown
814
00:40:41.269 --> 00:40:46.699
is your subjective feelings of connection. And this, to me,
815
00:40:46.739 --> 00:40:48.920
goes back to meditation and so forth. Because I think
816
00:40:48.960 --> 00:40:50.800
we've all been there where we've been in a crowd
817
00:40:50.840 --> 00:40:52.860
and felt lonely. Like maybe you've been even at a
818
00:40:52.900 --> 00:40:55.239
Thanksgiving dinner with family and you feel alone. You don't
819
00:40:55.260 --> 00:41:00.400
feel connected. Or you are alone in your apartment and
820
00:41:00.420 --> 00:41:02.860
you just did a loving kindness meditation or something and
821
00:41:02.880 --> 00:41:06.610
you're feeling connected to the whole world. Or for some reason,
822
00:41:06.690 --> 00:41:09.889
you feel that sense of belonging. So if you look
823
00:41:10.900 --> 00:41:12.980
back on that, like what is it that makes us
824
00:41:13.019 --> 00:41:16.800
feel connected or disconnected from other people, regardless of circumstance,
825
00:41:17.579 --> 00:41:19.449
it has also a lot to do with stress. If
826
00:41:19.469 --> 00:41:22.889
you're very stressed, if you have any negative emotions, stress, anxiety, depression,
827
00:41:23.210 --> 00:41:26.849
they're connected to feelings of self-focus. We know that from research.
828
00:41:26.869 --> 00:41:29.090
When we are in a negative state, we are more self-focused,
829
00:41:29.530 --> 00:41:32.320
probably for good reason, right? Because at its origin, stress
830
00:41:32.360 --> 00:41:34.199
is supposed to save your life. So when you're stressed,
831
00:41:34.340 --> 00:41:35.980
it's probably better that you're focused on yourself rather than
832
00:41:36.019 --> 00:41:38.360
spacing out so you can save your life. But if
833
00:41:38.380 --> 00:41:42.619
you're stressed chronically, you're focused on yourself, you're less likely
834
00:41:42.659 --> 00:41:44.519
to connect with others. And when you do connect, less
835
00:41:44.539 --> 00:41:47.559
likely to connect successfully because you're focused on yourself, if
836
00:41:47.599 --> 00:41:51.519
that makes sense. So that's why practices, you know, like
837
00:41:51.679 --> 00:41:55.340
any of the practices that really help trigger your parasympathetic
838
00:41:55.409 --> 00:42:00.349
nervous system, your rest and digest, your calming response, those
839
00:42:00.389 --> 00:42:02.110
are the ones that put you back in that place
840
00:42:02.130 --> 00:42:04.170
where you're your best self, where you're your true self.
841
00:42:04.570 --> 00:42:07.150
And in that place, When your cup is full at
842
00:42:07.170 --> 00:42:09.289
that place, that is when you feel a greater sense
843
00:42:09.329 --> 00:42:11.329
of connection. You know, it's on those days when we're
844
00:42:11.349 --> 00:42:13.110
feeling in a really good mood, you know, the sun
845
00:42:13.170 --> 00:42:15.829
is shining, something nice happened. It's also when you notice, oh,
846
00:42:16.050 --> 00:42:17.929
you know, I'm just going to hold that door open
847
00:42:18.010 --> 00:42:20.550
for another few seconds. Let that person through. Oh, that
848
00:42:20.570 --> 00:42:22.380
person dropped their groceries. Let me just go help them.
849
00:42:22.820 --> 00:42:24.119
You know, let me just take some time and help
850
00:42:24.139 --> 00:42:27.300
this person. So again, it goes back, I think, in part,
851
00:42:27.340 --> 00:42:29.480
I mean, I can't say universally, but for sure, the
852
00:42:30.179 --> 00:42:33.380
ability to manage our stress. impacts the state of our mind.
853
00:42:33.699 --> 00:42:35.079
And the state of our mind is what we're talking
854
00:42:35.099 --> 00:42:38.130
about here in terms of the benefits of connection.
855
00:42:38.210 --> 00:42:41.550
Yeah, it's so interesting. The paradox, the seeming paradox here
856
00:42:41.590 --> 00:42:47.969
that self-care, self-love, even self-compassion, that one could assume on
857
00:42:48.010 --> 00:42:51.139
some level could lead to massive spikes in solipsism and
858
00:42:51.159 --> 00:42:55.019
self-centeredness actually make you more available.
859
00:42:55.039 --> 00:42:59.400
Yeah, I know. Isn't that so interesting? Yeah. Yeah, oftentimes
860
00:42:59.780 --> 00:43:01.539
people think, oh, well, I don't want to do all that.
861
00:43:01.559 --> 00:43:06.599
That's selfish or meditation is somehow selfish and self-absorbed. It's like, actually,
862
00:43:06.739 --> 00:43:08.480
chances are it's going to make you a better person.
863
00:43:08.500 --> 00:43:11.179
It's actually an act of service for others because when
864
00:43:11.219 --> 00:43:14.619
you show up having taken care of your stress levels,
865
00:43:15.219 --> 00:43:17.469
you show up available. You show up at your best self.
866
00:43:19.030 --> 00:43:22.380
So what do you recommend for people out there who
867
00:43:22.389 --> 00:43:24.179
are listening to this and saying, well, I can't see
868
00:43:24.199 --> 00:43:27.619
my grandchildren or, you know, I can't see my colleagues.
869
00:43:27.679 --> 00:43:30.940
I can't see my friends. What do I do about
870
00:43:30.980 --> 00:43:34.019
social connection, Emma? I mean, I know the science, but
871
00:43:34.039 --> 00:43:36.679
that just makes me feel even more disempowered. Right.
872
00:43:37.199 --> 00:43:41.889
You know, every time I think, poor me, or I think,
873
00:43:42.510 --> 00:43:44.670
you know, I remind myself, wait a sec, what can
874
00:43:44.710 --> 00:43:47.070
I do for someone else? What can I do for others?
875
00:43:47.110 --> 00:43:48.989
What can I do for my grandchildren? Maybe I can
876
00:43:49.030 --> 00:43:50.889
send them a package. Maybe I can do something for,
877
00:43:51.280 --> 00:43:55.039
you know, at that moment, shifting the perspective because you
878
00:43:55.079 --> 00:43:57.699
know what? Loneliness hurts like hell. Like we know on
879
00:43:57.719 --> 00:44:00.139
the level of the brain that loneliness is the parts
880
00:44:00.159 --> 00:44:03.480
of the brain that are activated in loneliness overlap with
881
00:44:03.500 --> 00:44:07.199
the parts of the brain that are active during physical pain.
882
00:44:07.320 --> 00:44:09.909
Like we know it hurts like hell, but because it
883
00:44:09.949 --> 00:44:13.460
hurts like hell, That is an opportunity, you know, when
884
00:44:13.480 --> 00:44:15.480
you can, you feel you have the strength, but it
885
00:44:15.519 --> 00:44:17.699
also often gives you strength to turn that pain into
886
00:44:17.739 --> 00:44:19.980
what can I do for someone else? How can I
887
00:44:20.099 --> 00:44:23.449
use this painful experience to understand that others also have
888
00:44:23.469 --> 00:44:25.610
this pain and what can I do for them? Okay,
889
00:44:25.670 --> 00:44:28.670
I'm having this pain. I'm alone in my apartment. But
890
00:44:28.710 --> 00:44:30.369
you know what? I know that the person next door
891
00:44:30.409 --> 00:44:32.250
is alone in their apartment. They're feeling the same pain.
892
00:44:32.289 --> 00:44:33.469
And you know what? I think I'm just going to
893
00:44:33.610 --> 00:44:37.550
drop off some chocolates at their door anonymously or some other,
894
00:44:37.590 --> 00:44:39.070
you know what I mean? Like, it doesn't matter what
895
00:44:39.110 --> 00:44:41.659
it is. But I have to say, I mean, personally,
896
00:44:41.739 --> 00:44:44.989
I've had this experience, too. For me, I'm a writer,
897
00:44:45.070 --> 00:44:48.570
so things come out in writing. I remember that, you know,
898
00:44:48.610 --> 00:44:51.110
I was feeling a real strong loneliness. This was not
899
00:44:51.130 --> 00:44:53.190
during the pandemic, pre-pandemic at one point. And then I
900
00:44:53.210 --> 00:44:55.449
wrote an article on loneliness. And I just wrote it.
901
00:44:55.610 --> 00:44:58.739
And I wrote about different aspects. And then I had
902
00:44:58.780 --> 00:45:00.559
people thanking me for writing that article. So I think
903
00:45:00.579 --> 00:45:03.179
we all have an opportunity in whatever way works for
904
00:45:03.280 --> 00:45:06.469
us to try and also– understand and learn from the
905
00:45:06.530 --> 00:45:08.590
pain and help us come up with solutions for how
906
00:45:08.630 --> 00:45:10.889
we can help others. And in that moment, the pain
907
00:45:10.909 --> 00:45:11.989
transforms as well.
908
00:45:12.010 --> 00:45:17.030
It's counterintuitive, but really compelling that one of the best
909
00:45:17.739 --> 00:45:20.159
answers to loneliness is service.
910
00:45:21.159 --> 00:45:23.099
Yeah. And I don't want to reduce it to that either.
911
00:45:23.219 --> 00:45:25.940
Obviously everybody is in their own situation. It's one thing
912
00:45:25.960 --> 00:45:29.599
that can help, I should say. Yeah. Yes.
913
00:45:29.619 --> 00:45:32.300
I think that's fair. We're not pitching silver bullets on
914
00:45:32.519 --> 00:45:34.639
the show, but it, it is a thing that can
915
00:45:34.679 --> 00:45:37.460
help if it's available to you as, as a modality.
916
00:45:37.900 --> 00:45:39.460
Yeah. I mean, I've been looking at the science of
917
00:45:39.480 --> 00:45:41.820
happiness for a couple of decades now. If I were
918
00:45:41.860 --> 00:45:45.510
to reduce it to one sentence, I would say the
919
00:45:45.590 --> 00:45:48.570
happiest people who are fulfilled over the longterm, not just
920
00:45:48.610 --> 00:45:51.510
short term, you know, highs longterm are the people who
921
00:45:51.570 --> 00:45:54.849
balance a life that is characterized by compassion and altruism
922
00:45:55.929 --> 00:46:00.150
balanced with self-compassion and the self-care piece, you know, that,
923
00:46:00.969 --> 00:46:03.050
Those are the people that are resilient over the long
924
00:46:03.070 --> 00:46:05.510
term and also most fulfilled and healthy.
925
00:46:06.530 --> 00:46:10.409
And so, I mean, I've only recently come to understand
926
00:46:10.429 --> 00:46:14.630
this because I somehow thought that the fact that I
927
00:46:14.750 --> 00:46:20.340
had self-interest made me a monster, you know, like cloven hooves,
928
00:46:20.409 --> 00:46:26.940
retractable jaw monster, because I was ambitious, am ambitious. But actually,
929
00:46:27.059 --> 00:46:29.059
as I believe it was Bill Gates once said, there
930
00:46:29.099 --> 00:46:35.809
are two great and peacefully cohabiting human drives. And they
931
00:46:36.010 --> 00:46:38.789
are to follow your own interests and advance your own
932
00:46:38.829 --> 00:46:42.650
interests and to help other people. And actually these can
933
00:46:42.670 --> 00:46:44.010
be mutually reinforcing.
934
00:46:44.610 --> 00:46:47.449
Yeah, definitely. And, you know, because of your ambition, Dan,
935
00:46:47.489 --> 00:46:49.710
you have made a difference in a lot of people's lives.
936
00:46:50.010 --> 00:46:52.769
And so, you know, sometimes you can also think, well,
937
00:46:52.809 --> 00:46:55.070
where does that self-interest come? It was placed within me
938
00:46:55.260 --> 00:46:55.900
for a purpose.
939
00:46:57.480 --> 00:46:57.719
Yeah.
940
00:46:57.940 --> 00:47:00.510
And, you know, Dan, you have such a big heart,
941
00:47:00.650 --> 00:47:03.469
you know, that it's hard to distinguish, you know, what,
942
00:47:03.530 --> 00:47:06.150
what is motivating you? Is it wanting to help others
943
00:47:06.230 --> 00:47:08.800
or self-interest? I would say it's a very, very big
944
00:47:08.840 --> 00:47:10.320
dose of wanting to help others there.
945
00:47:11.900 --> 00:47:14.119
If you're not fully employed by Yale at this point,
946
00:47:14.179 --> 00:47:16.159
I can also employ you as my PRH. That would
947
00:47:16.199 --> 00:47:21.500
be great. Let me ask about one last area of
948
00:47:21.639 --> 00:47:24.730
the science of of happiness that I know you've spent
949
00:47:24.789 --> 00:47:26.349
a lot of time thinking about and talking about and
950
00:47:26.389 --> 00:47:30.630
helping other people with, which is building organizations that function
951
00:47:30.829 --> 00:47:34.429
sanely and humanely. What are the headlines here from what
952
00:47:34.449 --> 00:47:36.269
you've seen and studied?
953
00:47:37.010 --> 00:47:40.070
Well, it's interesting. I mean, the way that organizations, companies
954
00:47:40.110 --> 00:47:44.650
have been run over decades is, again, this idea of self-interest,
955
00:47:44.769 --> 00:47:48.110
of motivating people with money and benefits and things like that.
956
00:47:48.150 --> 00:47:50.070
How do you gain loyalty? Just pay more money. Well,
957
00:47:50.250 --> 00:47:52.599
that's not real loyalty, right? Like, If you were to
958
00:47:52.619 --> 00:47:54.710
think right now, like, who are the people you're truly
959
00:47:54.769 --> 00:47:57.070
loyal to? My guess would be that there are people
960
00:47:57.110 --> 00:47:59.510
who are there for you unconditionally at different points in
961
00:47:59.530 --> 00:48:00.690
your life, right?
962
00:48:02.210 --> 00:48:02.489
Yes.
963
00:48:02.530 --> 00:48:05.429
There's the people that you never forgot their acts of
964
00:48:05.489 --> 00:48:08.980
kindness and support toward you. And so that is where,
965
00:48:09.079 --> 00:48:12.519
you know, loyalty truly comes from is those human interactions.
966
00:48:12.559 --> 00:48:14.480
And so if you ask people, do you prefer to
967
00:48:14.519 --> 00:48:16.280
work in a workplace where you make more money to
968
00:48:16.300 --> 00:48:18.920
a place where you're happier? People say happier. And then
969
00:48:18.940 --> 00:48:20.239
if you go deeper and you're like, well, what does
970
00:48:20.260 --> 00:48:24.059
that happiness at work mean? It means positive social relationships.
971
00:48:24.599 --> 00:48:27.420
So most people spend more time at work than at home.
972
00:48:28.139 --> 00:48:29.860
I mean, although these days it may be at home,
973
00:48:29.900 --> 00:48:31.639
but they're still working. But anyway, you get my drift.
974
00:48:31.699 --> 00:48:36.119
But the point is, our need for positive social connection
975
00:48:36.639 --> 00:48:39.090
is so profound. It doesn't matter if you're at work
976
00:48:39.150 --> 00:48:43.190
or not. For example, your boss has a direct impact
977
00:48:43.329 --> 00:48:47.309
on your heart health, blood pressure, risk of heart disease
978
00:48:47.489 --> 00:48:51.550
and heart attack. We're so physiologically connected in our relationships.
979
00:48:51.570 --> 00:48:53.909
It doesn't matter if they're professional or not. And so
980
00:48:54.789 --> 00:48:58.750
there's a relatively new field of research called positive organizational
981
00:48:58.809 --> 00:49:01.650
scholarship that looks at this. And they are finding that
982
00:49:01.690 --> 00:49:07.119
those organizations characterized by compassionate leaders, positive interactions, cultures that
983
00:49:07.159 --> 00:49:11.980
are characterized by forgiveness, by trust, by integrity, by humility,
984
00:49:12.980 --> 00:49:16.900
do way, way, way better than traditional organizations. It's really...
985
00:49:17.000 --> 00:49:19.150
the workplaces of the future. Not many people know about
986
00:49:19.170 --> 00:49:22.510
this research yet. but they will. And over time, organizations
987
00:49:22.530 --> 00:49:25.530
will become better and happier places that then have employees
988
00:49:25.550 --> 00:49:29.070
that are happier and therefore families that are happier and healthier.
989
00:49:29.530 --> 00:49:33.659
So it's really a wonderful field of research that is
990
00:49:33.699 --> 00:49:35.760
what's needed. It's really what's needed right now.
991
00:49:36.360 --> 00:49:38.960
It's funny how what you just said actually rhymes quite
992
00:49:39.550 --> 00:49:42.139
powerfully with what we were talking about right before it,
993
00:49:42.190 --> 00:49:45.889
that there's this overlap between self-interest and other interests. It
994
00:49:45.949 --> 00:49:49.789
will be in the self-interest of companies to run humane
995
00:49:50.469 --> 00:49:53.829
organizations because it will impact the bottom line.
996
00:49:54.670 --> 00:49:56.929
And that's so true. And it goes back to what
997
00:49:56.949 --> 00:49:59.010
we said earlier, too, about remember when if you hide
998
00:49:59.050 --> 00:50:01.949
your anger, the other person's heart rate increases. It has
999
00:50:01.989 --> 00:50:04.860
to be authentic because we register an authenticity as threat,
1000
00:50:05.239 --> 00:50:07.739
which is where leaders are going to have to do
1001
00:50:07.780 --> 00:50:09.860
their work. They're going to have to do their internal work.
1002
00:50:09.880 --> 00:50:11.099
They're going to have to show up and look at
1003
00:50:11.139 --> 00:50:13.860
themselves in the face and do their meditation and know
1004
00:50:13.920 --> 00:50:18.039
themselves in order to show up as a positive leader authentically.
1005
00:50:19.579 --> 00:50:22.420
Man, I can tell you, though, it ain't easy. It
1006
00:50:22.440 --> 00:50:26.780
ain't always fun because I've done some of this work
1007
00:50:26.800 --> 00:50:30.269
and let's not sugarcoat it.
1008
00:50:30.659 --> 00:50:35.320
Right? It's hard. And yet it's inevitable right now. I mean,
1009
00:50:35.800 --> 00:50:40.380
what's the alternative, right? What's the alternative of facing your
1010
00:50:40.409 --> 00:50:42.980
own self, of getting acquainted with your own mind? The
1011
00:50:43.000 --> 00:50:47.920
alternative is living a life where you're not truly engaging
1012
00:50:47.980 --> 00:50:51.659
with your own self, right? I mean, you're maybe filling
1013
00:50:51.679 --> 00:50:53.440
your life with a lot of other things, but not
1014
00:50:53.500 --> 00:50:57.360
really and truly seeing, you know, what your full potential is.
1015
00:50:58.260 --> 00:51:00.440
When you say doing your own work, which is important
1016
00:51:00.460 --> 00:51:01.800
for leaders to do, and by the way, I think
1017
00:51:01.820 --> 00:51:04.840
we should define leadership broadly because it doesn't mean you're
1018
00:51:04.920 --> 00:51:08.260
the CEO, although that's great, but it can mean you're
1019
00:51:08.389 --> 00:51:12.329
running any team or you're even a team member. Leadership,
1020
00:51:12.389 --> 00:51:16.170
I think, as holistically understood, would include almost everybody, if
1021
00:51:16.230 --> 00:51:19.719
not actually everybody. When you say doing your own work,
1022
00:51:19.820 --> 00:51:21.900
what does that look like to you?
1023
00:51:23.340 --> 00:51:25.820
Well, going back to the emotion thing, it looks like
1024
00:51:26.750 --> 00:51:29.429
not running away from yourself, first of all. I mean,
1025
00:51:29.449 --> 00:51:33.030
I think it's just really easy for, you know, not
1026
00:51:33.050 --> 00:51:36.760
to want to face the discomfort of whatever happens within
1027
00:51:36.800 --> 00:51:41.480
you and just to mask it with, you know, alcohol, shopping, chalk, whatever.
1028
00:51:41.500 --> 00:51:45.079
You don't want to name your favorite activity to sort
1029
00:51:45.179 --> 00:51:48.380
of escape from the realities of your own mind, right?
1030
00:51:49.039 --> 00:51:52.719
So knowing yourself and healing yourself, you know, you have traumas,
1031
00:51:52.739 --> 00:51:56.079
you have anxieties, healing yourself, going through that. And it
1032
00:51:56.159 --> 00:51:58.550
is challenging to do. And yet when you've done it,
1033
00:51:58.579 --> 00:52:00.960
you're free. Every time you've become more and more free
1034
00:52:01.059 --> 00:52:04.219
from those shackles that have been holding you back.
1035
00:52:05.400 --> 00:52:08.949
What's the area, in your opinion, of happiness research where
1036
00:52:09.150 --> 00:52:11.190
there are the most unanswered questions?
1037
00:52:13.590 --> 00:52:18.940
I would say... spirituality probably, because scientists do not want
1038
00:52:18.980 --> 00:52:22.679
to go there because it's not scientific. And so they
1039
00:52:22.699 --> 00:52:26.579
don't want to ask those questions. And yet human beings,
1040
00:52:26.599 --> 00:52:30.630
a large percentage of human beings engage in some spiritual practices,
1041
00:52:30.809 --> 00:52:35.730
are interested in spiritual practices. And yet because it's within
1042
00:52:35.769 --> 00:52:40.570
the realm of science, scientists feel like they can't study that.
1043
00:52:41.300 --> 00:52:47.150
So you're missing a huge, important piece of human civilization.
1044
00:52:47.170 --> 00:52:50.289
I think that is a part that has not been
1045
00:52:50.329 --> 00:52:52.949
studied well because of that sort of scientific bias against
1046
00:52:53.190 --> 00:52:56.780
looking at that, which is too bad, really, so far anyway.
1047
00:52:57.400 --> 00:53:00.940
I remember, this is nearly 20 years ago, maybe 15
1048
00:53:00.940 --> 00:53:04.659
years ago, I met the guy who wrote Bowling Alone,
1049
00:53:04.699 --> 00:53:07.710
which is about the sort of social atomization, loneliness, the
1050
00:53:07.750 --> 00:53:12.190
fact that we, American culture and global culture and Western culture,
1051
00:53:12.250 --> 00:53:16.750
let's just say, the community has really fallen apart. And
1052
00:53:16.789 --> 00:53:19.570
that includes organized religion. And he also had some data.
1053
00:53:19.590 --> 00:53:21.699
I met him at a conference and I was talking
1054
00:53:21.719 --> 00:53:24.800
to him. He had some data that showed that friendships
1055
00:53:25.019 --> 00:53:30.400
made in church or in any sort of spiritual context
1056
00:53:30.539 --> 00:53:35.519
were supercharged friendships. And that, I mean, I've just seen
1057
00:53:35.559 --> 00:53:39.679
in my own life from my friendships through meditation and Buddhism.
1058
00:53:39.719 --> 00:53:42.099
I don't know if it counts as church or what
1059
00:53:42.139 --> 00:53:45.619
his research parameters were there, but those friendships are different.
1060
00:53:46.300 --> 00:53:48.320
Yeah. Well, that makes sense. And that ties back to
1061
00:53:48.340 --> 00:53:52.889
the positive organizational research too, because in those sort of
1062
00:53:53.239 --> 00:53:58.559
more spiritually oriented organizations, they're based on fundamental virtues of,
1063
00:53:58.780 --> 00:54:03.139
you know, honesty, authenticity, trust, integrity, because that's sort of
1064
00:54:03.900 --> 00:54:06.849
many of the principles that are taught in those contexts.
1065
00:54:07.510 --> 00:54:10.769
And so when you start a friendship from that place,
1066
00:54:11.210 --> 00:54:14.050
you're immediately starting it from a place of authenticity, as
1067
00:54:14.110 --> 00:54:16.070
opposed to maybe a friendship that you start at work,
1068
00:54:16.090 --> 00:54:18.269
where you're a little guarded, where you Don't know what
1069
00:54:18.289 --> 00:54:20.510
they're thinking. You don't understand the politics. You don't know
1070
00:54:20.550 --> 00:54:23.050
how much you can disclose. You know, whereas I feel
1071
00:54:23.070 --> 00:54:27.179
like oftentimes in a spiritual context, you're going to you're
1072
00:54:27.219 --> 00:54:29.500
already meeting in a place where you're sharing sort of
1073
00:54:30.059 --> 00:54:32.840
deeper private parts of yourself, which is your spiritual life.
1074
00:54:33.860 --> 00:54:36.119
That's such an interesting idea, because I can see at
1075
00:54:36.179 --> 00:54:40.610
a time when organized religion. It doesn't have as powerful
1076
00:54:40.650 --> 00:54:44.900
a draw for many people as it used to. where,
1077
00:54:45.360 --> 00:54:49.630
you know, in some ways, work could become church if
1078
00:54:49.650 --> 00:54:53.269
done right, where you share a common purpose, you're deriving
1079
00:54:53.329 --> 00:54:55.670
meaning from the same things, you're on the same mission.
1080
00:54:56.469 --> 00:55:00.550
And if the atmosphere is properly orchestrated, that you feel
1081
00:55:00.590 --> 00:55:01.849
like you can truly be yourself.
1082
00:55:02.679 --> 00:55:05.019
Exactly. I mean, that is if you can create a
1083
00:55:05.039 --> 00:55:08.960
sense of belonging and family, in any organization, you're going
1084
00:55:09.000 --> 00:55:12.679
to create that same breeding ground for authentic relationships and
1085
00:55:13.119 --> 00:55:15.599
And trust, which by the way, ties into the ability
1086
00:55:15.619 --> 00:55:20.449
to be innovative too. So employees who feel trusted, like
1087
00:55:20.550 --> 00:55:23.269
trust in their environments and they feel like they belong
1088
00:55:23.309 --> 00:55:26.030
and they're valued, they're going to be way more innovative
1089
00:55:26.190 --> 00:55:28.789
because they're going to trust that they can go out
1090
00:55:28.809 --> 00:55:31.090
there on a limb, that they can share some crazy
1091
00:55:31.150 --> 00:55:34.309
idea that it won't get shut down or punished, but
1092
00:55:34.389 --> 00:55:36.610
that will be celebrated even if it's a little wacky
1093
00:55:36.630 --> 00:55:39.690
and won't work. But as a consequence, you get also
1094
00:55:39.750 --> 00:55:42.570
that innovation, which leads to human flourishing, you know?
1095
00:55:44.610 --> 00:55:46.239
Something I've learned the hard way as somebody who has
1096
00:55:46.280 --> 00:55:48.880
a penchant for being dismissive is that when you squash
1097
00:55:49.079 --> 00:55:52.099
what's called psychological safety, the freedom that people feel, the
1098
00:55:52.139 --> 00:55:55.539
comfort that people feel to speak up, then you hurt
1099
00:55:55.940 --> 00:55:58.889
not only the other people, but you hurt yourself and
1100
00:55:58.949 --> 00:56:02.269
the output from the team. Okay, so before we go,
1101
00:56:02.489 --> 00:56:05.809
everybody who wants to learn more about you, how do
1102
00:56:05.829 --> 00:56:06.349
they do so?
1103
00:56:07.389 --> 00:56:11.010
I have a website, which is myname.com. And I have
1104
00:56:11.110 --> 00:56:17.780
a book called The Happiness Track. And I'm on social media, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn.
1105
00:56:18.619 --> 00:56:20.360
Thank you so much for doing this. It was a pleasure.
1106
00:56:20.940 --> 00:56:22.500
Thank you, Dan. It was really fun.
1107
00:56:25.210 --> 00:56:28.210
Thanks again to Emma. By the way, the name I
1108
00:56:28.570 --> 00:56:32.070
couldn't remember during the interview was Robert Putnam, author of
1109
00:56:32.170 --> 00:56:35.389
Bowling Alone. Robert, if you want to come on the show,
1110
00:56:35.409 --> 00:56:38.199
let me know. Speaking of the show, it is made
1111
00:56:38.239 --> 00:56:42.869
by Samuel Johns, DJ Kashmir. Kim Baikama, Maria Wirtel, and
1112
00:56:43.150 --> 00:56:47.139
Jen Point with audio engineering by Ultraviolet Audio. And as always,
1113
00:56:47.159 --> 00:56:50.460
a shout out to Ryan Kessler and Josh Kohan from
1114
00:56:50.480 --> 00:56:52.980
ABC News. We'll see you all on Wednesday for a
1115
00:56:53.039 --> 00:56:57.159
brand new episode with the meditation teacher, Bart Van Mellick.
1116
00:56:57.179 --> 00:57:00.039
We're going to talk about how to use meditation while
1117
00:57:00.059 --> 00:57:01.320
you're talking to other people.