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Speaker 2: Oh hey, it's that person sitting on the bus who
Speaker 2: has the same phone case as you, So you spend
Speaker 2: the whole ride wondering if you should say something, and
Speaker 2: then you never do. Ali ward back with an episode
Speaker 2: of ologies that I'd hope lifts some spirits, or at
Speaker 2: the very least as you sprawled out on a blanket
Speaker 2: staring into the canopy of a tree, because is happiness
Speaker 2: even possible in this our shared global porta potty of circumstance?
Speaker 2: Does being grateful to Jack? Can we train our brains
Speaker 2: to look for good? Okay? One good thing real quick.
Speaker 2: Patrons at patreon dot com slash ologies who make the
Speaker 2: show possible. You can join if you want. It's twenty
Speaker 2: five cents an episode. It's a dollar a month. It's
Speaker 2: cheaper than a parking meter by the minute, my friends.
Speaker 2: Thank you also to everyone finding other ologites in the
Speaker 2: wild by wearing ologies merch, including masks. Thank you particularly
Speaker 2: for that, and for keeping the show up in the
Speaker 2: charts by rating and subscribing genuine things. To everyone who
Speaker 2: leaves reviews. You know that I read all of them,
Speaker 2: and then I pick a new one each week to
Speaker 2: read like a comment card at a local diner, such
Speaker 2: as this one from LISTI go go one two three four,
Speaker 2: who says I love how Ali is immediately best friends
Speaker 2: with everyone she interviews. Oh, listed, go go one two
Speaker 2: three four. You have no idea how timely this is.
Speaker 2: Get ready for some real friend magic in this one.
Speaker 2: So awesome ology. First off, it is a word. It
Speaker 2: does exist on the Internet already. It is defined as
Speaker 2: the study of awesome. Naturally. Awesome comes from a root
Speaker 2: meaning profoundly reverential way back in the fifteen hundreds, but
Speaker 2: before that, all referred to a feeling of terror, or fright,
Speaker 2: and in the twelve hundreds all even conoted depression, So
Speaker 2: AWE came from fright until it meant thunderstruck and then
Speaker 2: it meant cool like in the early nineteen sixties, So
Speaker 2: depression to reverence to cool. And this episode is centered
Speaker 2: around the science of gratitude. Is there any there is?
Speaker 2: And why having AWE for everyday life can give your
Speaker 2: brain a helping hand out of the muck that we
Speaker 2: all get stuck in. So I myself struggle with this
Speaker 2: a ton. I found this episode to be full of
Speaker 2: really good strategies, some intriguing science, and also most importantly,
Speaker 2: permission to treat my brain with some kindness and stop
Speaker 2: the hamster wheel to take stock of what's good now.
Speaker 2: This guest is someone I have known about for years,
Speaker 2: but we were just introduced by Ludology guest and video
Speaker 2: game expert doctor Jane McGonagall, and I was so excited
Speaker 2: because I remember his blog A Thousand Awesome Things and
Speaker 2: it got me through a really stressful time when I
Speaker 2: was working in a newspaper and I was just utterly frazzled.
Speaker 2: And I've always wanted to look at the science of
Speaker 2: gratitude ever since I made the great filology is not
Speaker 2: a real word, minisowed I think back in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: and because he's a person who has authored several books
Speaker 2: looking into it, I sent too eager an email asking
Speaker 2: him to be a guest. He's a longtime humor writer.
Speaker 2: He's a graduate of Harvard Business School. He's an author,
Speaker 2: a ted speaker. He's the founder of the Institute for
Speaker 2: Global Happiness, which offers a bunch of free resources to
Speaker 2: help improve happiness in the workplace. He wrote the book
Speaker 2: of Awesome, the Happiness Equation and You Are Awesome. And
Speaker 2: he also hosts a podcast, It's Great. It's called Three Books,
Speaker 2: and in each episode he reads three formative books of
Speaker 2: a guest. But first and foremost, listen to this one
Speaker 2: in its entirety, because despite his many accomplishments and dissection
Speaker 2: of what makes our thinking parts happy, he's also just
Speaker 2: a normal cool guy who understands that no one is
Speaker 2: happy all the time, and that the goal is not
Speaker 2: to be happy, but just a happier So get comfy,
Speaker 2: kick back, and here first about a few tough things,
Speaker 2: and then about your new morning ritual. Why you should
Speaker 2: sniff a tree Diary entries, honeymoon drama, the illusion of history,
Speaker 2: the simplicity of appreciation, the gambles you take, will scrolling regrets,
Speaker 2: meditation tricks, and how to wrestle with your wiring that
Speaker 2: means well, plus a few of my poodle tic taking
Speaker 2: in and out of the room with my new buddy,
Speaker 2: awesomologist Neil Pezrica. If you could say your first and
Speaker 2: last name and your pronouns.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my name is Neil pas Richa, and my pronouns
Speaker 3: are he and him. Cool. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Okay, So, first off, I have known about you for
Speaker 2: over a decade, and I was a really big fan
Speaker 2: of your blog, so I've just known about you forever.
Speaker 2: I feel like you've been in my life for a decade.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, that's so kind of you. I mean,
Speaker 3: I wrote a thousand awesome things from two thousand and
Speaker 3: eight to twenty twelve, like it was a four year stretch,
Speaker 3: like nineus years ago whatever. So whenever anyone says that
Speaker 3: to me, which is pretty pretty rare, I think of
Speaker 3: them as like an old friend kind of Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: so's it's so cool. Thank you for knowing me when
Speaker 3: I wasn't the version I have of myself that I am.
Speaker 2: Early adopter over here. Dude, It's true. I've seen his
Speaker 2: ted talk and I knew of his work way back when.
Speaker 2: In order to get updates on people's lives you had
Speaker 2: to mosey to their individual blog spots or wordpressers tweets
Speaker 2: in that day. I don't know if you know, this
Speaker 2: arrived as group texts on flip phones, so for an
Speaker 2: approximate eon, this guy's been on my radar. I know
Speaker 2: your backstory, so I'm gonna have to ask it anyway,
Speaker 2: but i just don't even know where to begin because
Speaker 2: I'm just I'm so excited to talk to you. Okay,
Speaker 2: So you've been through some shit, dude, as have a
Speaker 2: lot of people, but you went through a pretty shitty
Speaker 2: time and you decided to try to get through the
Speaker 2: other side of it. Can you tell me a little
Speaker 2: bit about that first decision to just start your blog?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Sure. So I just did a callback to like
Speaker 3: two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine time period,
Speaker 3: and what I did mention was that I I came
Speaker 3: home from work one night and my wife told me
Speaker 3: that she did not want to be married to me anymore.
Speaker 3: And we had been together two years married marriage wise,
Speaker 3: but I think from like four or five years as
Speaker 3: a couple. We just bought a house, we were talking about
Speaker 3: having kids, and like, I mean, I just didn't see
Speaker 3: it coming like it was. It was. There was just
Speaker 3: like a it was just shock. It wasn't anger, it
Speaker 3: wasn't it wasn't really if it was just what like,
Speaker 3: it was like a complete shock. I didn't I didn't
Speaker 3: see that coming. And at the same time, my closest
Speaker 3: friend Chris was going through some severe mental health challenges
Speaker 3: and that culled in an attempted suicide and sadly eventually
Speaker 3: an actual suicide where he took his own life. And uh,
Speaker 3: of course, as this is all happening, I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 3: well I gotta sell the house and I like process
Speaker 3: this divorce. I need to find a place to live.
Speaker 3: I have to like give it, you know, eulogy. And
Speaker 3: I'm like, I'm a complete mess. And you mentioned that
Speaker 3: like Twitter, let just started started. But really it was
Speaker 3: like what I had, like a I had like a newspaper,
Speaker 3: and like TV and radio. These were like the distraction
Speaker 3: vehicles of the time. But when you turn on any
Speaker 3: of those things, it's all one hundred percent bad news,
Speaker 3: like it's still you know, it's still like a way
Speaker 3: to learn about all the world's ills and problems. So
Speaker 3: I was like, I need a way to distract myself
Speaker 3: and put myself in a positive mood. And so I
Speaker 3: go to Google and I said, been how to start
Speaker 3: a blog, and WordPress just narrowly edged out blog Spot
Speaker 3: as the top hit. And so that's where I went.
Speaker 3: And so I started a blog called one thousand Awesome
Speaker 3: Things dot com just as a way to put a
Speaker 3: smile on my face before I went to bed. Now, listen, Ali,
Speaker 3: I didn't know anything about these like gratitude research studies
Speaker 3: or like journaling practice study. I didn't know shit about that.
Speaker 3: All I knew was that I needed a way to
Speaker 3: distract myself before bed, and my posts sucked. My very
Speaker 3: first post on the blog was brocoflower, the ugly hybrid
Speaker 3: child of nature's ugliest vegetables. I mean, I found a
Speaker 3: picture of green cauliflower and I was like, how crazy
Speaker 3: is this thing awesome? And that was my whole entry.
Speaker 3: Like the birth of the blog was just like this
Speaker 3: is this is awesome today? And I went to bed
Speaker 3: and then I wrote the next day about like, yeah,
Speaker 3: the smell of walking by a bakery and like their
Speaker 3: bacon croissants, right, And then the next day I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: I found like five bucks on my old cult pocket. Okay,
Speaker 3: I wrote about that over time. What happened was in
Speaker 3: I don't know. A couple months later, I wrote a
Speaker 3: post called old Dangerous play Grown Equipment. I talked about
Speaker 3: how how bad is it that we don't have slides
Speaker 3: that burn the bottom of our legs anymore? You can't
Speaker 3: crash land in a bed full of cigarettes and milk thistles.
Speaker 3: Kids are whimps, you know, It's just like it was
Speaker 3: just one of those like kids today, they stink. And
Speaker 3: the post hit the front page of fark dot com,
Speaker 3: which was, yeah, you probably know like the six most
Speaker 3: big you know, six biggest like social media site in
Speaker 3: the world, and guess what they call themselves, And then
Speaker 3: it got like fifty thousand hits so one day, and
Speaker 3: then from there I had an audience. I didn't know
Speaker 3: what to do with an audience other than to keep going.
Speaker 3: And so, as you've already kind of hinted or we
Speaker 3: have the title, I wrote an awesome thing every single
Speaker 3: weekday for one thousand straight weekdays from two thousand and
Speaker 3: eight to twenty twelve, to Cheer myself up.
Speaker 2: Neil started at the bottom and his first post was
Speaker 2: titled number one thousand Brocco flower, but some other random gems.
Speaker 2: Watching cream go into coffee, When you should have gotten
Speaker 2: a parking ticket but didn't. When someone pronounces your name
Speaker 2: right on the first try. When you think you're out
Speaker 2: of clean underwear, but then you find one more pair
Speaker 2: the first ten seconds after you turn out the lights
Speaker 2: and wiggle yourself into a good sleeping position. Finding hidden
Speaker 2: compartments in things you already own, my maybe my personal
Speaker 2: favorite thing in the universe, remembering how lucky we are
Speaker 2: to be here right now. And number one anything you
Speaker 2: wanted to be now. His book, The Book of Awesome,
Speaker 2: became a New York Times bestseller and then number one
Speaker 2: international bestseller for one hundred and forty two weeks. This
Speaker 2: resonated with people. He went on to write several other
Speaker 2: books and built a small empire focused on intentional living
Speaker 2: and generally trying to make life suck less. Did you
Speaker 2: find before it went viral, before you started getting an audience,
Speaker 2: did you find your perspective or your mood or your
Speaker 2: optimism start to shift before that.
Speaker 3: I mean, the thing is I could not see anything
Speaker 3: good anywhere, right, Like that's the problem. I think that's
Speaker 3: even more pervasive today with how we monetized news media
Speaker 3: and social media, which is with our attentions and our
Speaker 3: mindshare going towards things that are like controversial or negative
Speaker 3: or obscene or absurd. And so I just couldn't see
Speaker 3: anything positive. And therefore when I posted about the other
Speaker 3: side of the pillow and how turning it over in
Speaker 3: the middle of the night to the cold side makes
Speaker 3: me happy, and you know, seventeen comments show up the
Speaker 3: next morning's like, oh my gosh, that's so true. And like,
Speaker 3: how about when you're lying on a couch and like
Speaker 3: someone just throws a blanket on you, you know, and
Speaker 3: someone would be like, ooh, I love that. And how
Speaker 3: about when you know, and people just started, like the
Speaker 3: little horrible solar system that was my brain at the
Speaker 3: time started forming a new planet that weighted down things
Speaker 3: towards positivity. And so the gravitational force of this blog
Speaker 3: in my own mind, created people throwing and sticking comments
Speaker 3: and ideas and all, and so it just rolled and
Speaker 3: rolled in deep big got bigger and bigger into like
Speaker 3: just a giant thing where Yeah, I started carrying around
Speaker 3: a cue card every day, you know, on writing down
Speaker 3: a list of things I found awesome every day and
Speaker 3: that practice alone will do this for you. Mm hmm,
Speaker 3: Like if you listening is like, wait, what should I do?
Speaker 3: It was like, just put a cue card in your
Speaker 3: pocket and write kind of good stuff you see. There
Speaker 3: you go, there you go. That's the answer because that's
Speaker 3: what totally helped change my thinking.
Speaker 2: And did you ever then try to figure out, if
Speaker 2: you know a bunch of people were studying this scientifically,
Speaker 2: did something click and did you say the wait, this
Speaker 2: isn't just.
Speaker 3: Me right, Well, I mean it was a long time
Speaker 3: before I started leaning into the science. And really it
Speaker 3: came from the fact that people kept asking me these
Speaker 3: questions and I had no answer. And so I got
Speaker 3: invited on the Today Show and Meredith Vieira, the host,
Speaker 3: looks me in the eye, and they don't tell you
Speaker 3: the questions before you go on the guest morning show
Speaker 3: in the world. They don't tell you. They don't think
Speaker 3: it's nice to tell you the questions. I'm sitting there
Speaker 3: like freaking j lo Is walking off the set and
Speaker 3: then I'm like, she looks at in the eyes and
Speaker 3: she's like, so, how do you teach all of America
Speaker 3: to be happy like you? I'm like, in my head,
Speaker 3: I'm thinking I've lost forty pounds to distress. I've got
Speaker 3: black bags inder my eyes. I just repainted my entire
Speaker 3: face for this show. All my friends think I'm depressed
Speaker 3: because I'm living in a bachelor apartment. You know. By myself,
Speaker 3: I'm not dating, I'm not going out. I'm not doing
Speaker 3: anything other than like working on my blog, outside of
Speaker 3: my outside of my day job, which is working out Walmart.
Speaker 3: And I just like fumbled through an answer. But after
Speaker 3: getting asked that question enough times, I'm like, I'm going
Speaker 3: to keep being asked, you know, And I start looking
Speaker 3: into the research. I start picking up books like Stumbling
Speaker 3: on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert.
Speaker 2: Neil, rolled up his sleeves and started studying up on
Speaker 2: gratitude and how it affects happiness. He was like, how
Speaker 2: does this really work?
Speaker 3: What is so and so saying about this and the
Speaker 3: other person saying and then it all came hitting me
Speaker 3: in the head really Ali. When a few years later
Speaker 3: I fell in love with Leslie, who spoiler alert, is
Speaker 3: my wife today. She and I went on a honeymoon,
Speaker 3: a wonderful honeymoon to Southeast Asia, which was awesome and
Speaker 3: great and wonderful until the flight home. And on the
Speaker 3: flight home, she was not feeling well. She was sick.
Speaker 3: And we had a six hour layover in Malaysia, in
Speaker 3: Kuala Lumpur, and she's like, I need to find a pharmacy.
Speaker 3: I need to find a place to lie down. I
Speaker 3: need to find a place to like, you know, rest.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, are you sure you're going to make
Speaker 3: this thirteen hour flight home from here to Toronto? And
Speaker 3: she's like, yeah, I'm definitely up for that. So we
Speaker 3: could find her pharmacy. We find a place to lie down,
Speaker 3: We get on the airplane until we take off toill
Speaker 3: like whatever, thirty thousand feet of o sea level. She
Speaker 3: goes to the tiny airplane bathroom at the front of
Speaker 3: the airplane. She comes back to our seats and she says,
Speaker 3: I'm pregnant. She bought the Pramsy tests and the Calalu
Speaker 3: Airport pharmacy. She did the Pramesy test and the tiny
Speaker 3: airplane bathroom at the front of the airplane and that's
Speaker 3: when it hit home for me. I'm like, I'm all
Speaker 3: this stuff that's been spinning around my mind for the
Speaker 3: last few years. I need to put it into something concrete.
Speaker 3: And so I came home to Toronto. I wrote a
Speaker 3: three hundred page letter to my unborn child on how
Speaker 3: to live a happy life. And in that book, or
Speaker 3: in that letter which turned into a book called The
Speaker 3: Happiness Equation, that book really is just a giant letter
Speaker 3: of everything I learned on how to be happy, or
Speaker 3: I guess you'd call it ostomology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and great news. You do not have to be
Speaker 2: Neil's firstborn child to benefit from his research and writing.
Speaker 2: So the Happiness Equation is essentially want nothing plus do
Speaker 2: anything equals have everything, and he covers things like how
Speaker 2: to make decisions faster and why success doesn't lead to happiness,
Speaker 2: some myths about multitasking, because when you find out on
Speaker 2: an airplane that you're sitting next to your fetus, you
Speaker 2: want to give it the benefits of a lot of
Speaker 2: scientific research, like a lot of it. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: I know we do not have the twelve hours. I
Speaker 2: would like to stay here and ask you literally everything
Speaker 2: in that Happiness equation. Can you tell me a little
Speaker 2: bit about the three a's of awesome and also how
Speaker 2: that factors into the happiness equation?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Sure. So basically, as the blog went viral and
Speaker 3: took off, I won an award at the International Academy
Speaker 3: of Digital Arts and Sciences called Best Blog, You're the
Speaker 3: Best Whatever Webby Award, and so I won that, and
Speaker 3: then a bunch of literary agents came and asked if
Speaker 3: I want to have a book deal. So I said yes,
Speaker 3: and then I turned into a book called The Book
Speaker 3: of Awesome. Why don't I tell you that? Because now
Speaker 3: when the book came out, I was invited to do
Speaker 3: a TED talk. When you do a TED talk, you
Speaker 3: can't just say like, I have no idea why you
Speaker 3: guys invited me. Here, here's a bunch of jokes I
Speaker 3: put on my blog. You have to You're supposed to
Speaker 3: have like a power point slide with like a framework
Speaker 3: of some kind. That's what I actually I thought it
Speaker 3: was too, so I was like, oh, what the hell
Speaker 3: am I going to? So I was like, oh, I
Speaker 3: know the three a's of awesome, And so my TED
Speaker 3: talk is called The Three is of Awesome, and in
Speaker 3: it I talk about attitude, awareness, and authenticity. I tried
Speaker 3: looking back at my own blog and asking myself, Hey,
Speaker 3: what was it about that blow that both helped it
Speaker 3: go viral? And what did I learn inside myself? And
Speaker 3: to me, it came down to those three things. In
Speaker 3: the speech. I did not put any breast tacks around them.
Speaker 3: I didn't I didn't sort of throw up reams of
Speaker 3: data and show all these numbers of correlations, and I
Speaker 3: just said, like, you got to have a good gratitude.
Speaker 3: You got to be as aware as like a three
Speaker 3: year old is, seeing everything like you're seeing it for
Speaker 3: the first time. And you need to be authentic to
Speaker 3: yourself so you can put yourself and you're doing this
Speaker 3: so well with ologies. It's like your pure, truest self
Speaker 3: is right here. I can feel your heart. I listened
Speaker 3: to your show and I'm like, it's like you're right
Speaker 3: beside me, and I think when you get those compliments,
Speaker 3: it's like it's because you're so authentic. And so I
Speaker 3: threw those things into a little power points line and
Speaker 3: I was like, that's the three days of awesome. Then
Speaker 3: flash forward to the Happiest question a few years later,
Speaker 3: and the root model underpinning the entire book. My entire
Speaker 3: view on happiness is this, Basically, I think everybody is
Speaker 3: lied to as children for real, I think that everyone
Speaker 3: is told that great work leads to a big success,
Speaker 3: leads to being happy, and those six words are really important.
Speaker 3: Great work leads to big success, leads to being happy.
Speaker 3: But as I started going into the research myself, I'm like,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, Like, how's everybody missing this? The research
Speaker 3: says it's the exact opposite. What if you look at
Speaker 3: doctor Sayielavimirski's work, She's published an amazing report that shows
Speaker 3: that if you show up to work or show up
Speaker 3: in your day with a positive attitude, you actually end
Speaker 3: up with thirty one percent higher productivity, thirty seven percent
Speaker 3: higher sales, three times more creativity. All these giant positive
Speaker 3: things come out of it. And then what happens, Well,
Speaker 3: it turns out that you end up getting promoted forty chance,
Speaker 3: you're more likely you're going to get promoted in the
Speaker 3: next year, and you're going to live longer, and like
Speaker 3: your longevity goes up. It's like, wait a minute, the
Speaker 3: models backwards. It's not great work, big success, be happy,
Speaker 3: it's being happy leads to great work leads to the
Speaker 3: big success.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, what holy shit?
Speaker 3: Okay, And so what I mean is when when you're
Speaker 3: a kid, what are your parents hitting you? Like if
Speaker 3: you're me, if you're a tiny brown kid in Canada,
Speaker 3: it's like, if you study really hard, then you'll get
Speaker 3: good grades and you become a doctor. Like that was
Speaker 3: like the that was like the Indian parents' dream, right,
Speaker 3: Like you become a doctor and then you'll be presumably
Speaker 3: the end of that is that you're happy. Or if
Speaker 3: you're in any other career today, it's like if you
Speaker 3: if you work really hard, then you get the promotion,
Speaker 3: then you're happy.
Speaker 2: Anyone else here raise Catholic thinking that this life is
Speaker 2: for suffering and then once you die, Saint Peter lifts
Speaker 2: the heavenly velvet rope to the eternal VIP party where
Speaker 2: there's a shrimp bffet that never gives you diarrhea. I
Speaker 2: grew up with the Italian Catholic philosophy. I'm not happy
Speaker 2: until I'm miserable again.
Speaker 3: The entire philosophy is about a working now to experience
Speaker 3: like a pleasure later and a happiness later. Right, But
Speaker 3: it's the opposite again. I quoted the work from Sylibmation.
Speaker 3: But it's like basically, if you no, no, if you
Speaker 3: can cultivate a positive mindset first, if when you wake
Speaker 3: up in the morning you can prime your brain for
Speaker 3: positivity somehow. If you can do that, I'll say it's easy.
Speaker 3: But if you can do that, then the great work follows.
Speaker 3: You're more productive, you're more creative, get a lot. We
Speaker 3: we like having happy bosses. We promote happy people underneath us.
Speaker 3: Blah blah blah blah blah. And then the big success
Speaker 3: what kind of success, well, both the career success and
Speaker 3: the health success, but also longevity life success only. Oh,
Speaker 3: we only live for thirty thousand days. That's that's the
Speaker 3: total lifespan, right and on. If you're happy, you get
Speaker 3: an extra bump, you get an extra few thousand. It's
Speaker 3: worth it.
Speaker 2: I need a fainting couch right now, like like about
Speaker 2: to collapse. That's bananas. They do not teach us that.
Speaker 2: And okay, obviously, and you know more than anyone you
Speaker 2: were not handed necessarily circumstances that would lead to a
Speaker 2: bunch of cheerfulness. What with you know, a marriage that
Speaker 2: fell apart without any notice and losing someone so close
Speaker 2: to you, to such tragic circumstances. So how do people
Speaker 2: who are experiencing terrible circumstances or who are predisposed chemically
Speaker 2: to not feel positive? What can we do that actually
Speaker 2: physically changes our brains?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And because anyone listening who just heard me say
Speaker 3: it's not great work make success, be happy, it's being
Speaker 3: happy leads to great work to big success. Might be
Speaker 3: sitting right now, whether they're driving their truck or in
Speaker 3: a hotel, gym in Mongolia or whereever they are, and say, like,
Speaker 3: I call Shenani gigs on that, how do you start
Speaker 3: with being happy? Like that's your question. You're like, how
Speaker 3: do you? How do you do that? That might lead
Speaker 3: to all the good stuff? But how do I do
Speaker 3: that first? And So, since I referenced Levermyerski's work once already,
Speaker 3: let me do it again. She's written a wonderful book
Speaker 3: called The Holl of Happiness. She pausits a model which says,
Speaker 3: fifty percent of your happiness is based on your genetics,
Speaker 3: ten percent of your happiness is based on your circumstances,
Speaker 3: and forty percent of your happiness is based on your
Speaker 3: intentional activities.
Speaker 2: If right now you're the meme with the lady haunted
Speaker 2: by math equations. Let me repeat that. In the book
Speaker 2: The How of Happiness by research psychologist doctor Sonya Lubimirski,
Speaker 2: she postulates that fifty percent of your happiness is based
Speaker 2: on your genetics, straight up chemistry, genetics, ten percent of
Speaker 2: your happiness is based on your circumstances, and forty percent
Speaker 2: of your happiness is based on your intentional activities. But
Speaker 2: remember though the bulk of it, fifty percent is to
Speaker 2: and chemical and gratitude is not a fix for mental
Speaker 2: health issues, nor is it anyone's failing to not feel
Speaker 2: happier as someone with a medicated anxiety disorder. I would
Speaker 2: never trade my prescription for journaling. But I can learn
Speaker 2: to upgrade my thinking patterns to serve my brain and
Speaker 2: my body better. And it's nice to think of my
Speaker 2: brain as kind of a jiggly little buddy up there,
Speaker 2: and I'm trying to feed it fewer moldy leftovers and
Speaker 2: more healthy options it wants.
Speaker 3: She's very careful to say it's a model, it's a framework.
Speaker 3: It's she's positing it like it's not like this is
Speaker 3: the way it is, so my whole caveat on this
Speaker 3: entire conversation is like, let's remember that we're talking about
Speaker 3: the forty percent. Okay, if you happen to listen to
Speaker 3: this and you have two kids, well one of those
Speaker 3: probably a little happier than the other. There's a genetic
Speaker 3: set point that we all kind of start with. But
Speaker 3: the forty percent a lot. It means that it's four
Speaker 3: times as much as your circumstances. Like, that's a huge thing.
Speaker 3: What you do in the world is four times more
Speaker 3: important than what's happening to you in the world. Right,
Speaker 3: So in that forty percent, now the question is like, well,
Speaker 3: what do we throw in there? Man? Like, what's the
Speaker 3: ingredients of this recipe you're telling us to cook? And
Speaker 3: in that sense, there's so many things. There are so
Speaker 3: many things, and when I say them to you, I'll
Speaker 3: just give you like three to start with. Okay, when
Speaker 3: I say them to you, you're gonna be like, oh,
Speaker 3: of course, because they're such good. Obvious thing that each
Speaker 3: of these things is supported by just a huge stack
Speaker 3: of scientific paperwork that says this is really good for you.
Speaker 3: Number one I'll start with is journaling dear diary. Okay,
Speaker 3: really famous study from the University of Texas. It is
Speaker 3: called how Do I Love the Let Me Count the Words.
Speaker 3: They looked at couples in a relationship who journaled and
Speaker 3: those who did not. They weren't journaling about each other,
Speaker 3: they were just doing the exercise and practice of journaling.
Speaker 3: Those who did the exercise and practice were fifty percent
Speaker 3: more likely to stay together after the three month mark.
Speaker 3: Of course, in the University of Texas three months, it's
Speaker 3: a very long relationship right college campus. And so what
Speaker 3: I'm saying is journaling. Do you like? First things? First?
Speaker 3: Do you visit yourself? Do you hang out with you?
Speaker 3: Do you process your thoughts? Do you put your your mind?
Speaker 3: Do you put those fiery little tendons in your mind
Speaker 3: somewhere or do they just sit there setting your brain
Speaker 3: on fire all day? Isn't it like journaling is a prescription?
Speaker 3: Journaling helps you be happy. I can't be more clear. Okay,
Speaker 3: that's one.
Speaker 2: I love this.
Speaker 3: Another one I'm gonna go to rant on about is
Speaker 3: uh forest therapy. Okay, getting out into the woods. I
Speaker 3: need to get into nature. Yeah you do. You do
Speaker 3: need to get into nature. In fact, there's research that
Speaker 3: shows that trees release a chemical called fiton sides, I'm
Speaker 3: probably pronouncing it wrong. P H Y T O n
Speaker 3: C I.
Speaker 2: D E side.
Speaker 3: It's a it's a chemical that trees released. A guess what,
Speaker 3: Ali when you breathe in this chemical, guess what. Your
Speaker 3: cortosol goes down, You're adrenaline goes down. Like these are
Speaker 3: the stress hormones. I'm saying, twenty minutes in the bushes
Speaker 3: is good for you. And if you're walking on a
Speaker 3: treadmill showing you a picture of like the you know,
Speaker 3: some fancy trail, that doesn't count. Okay, a locker. A
Speaker 3: forest is better than a mall right, you actually need
Speaker 3: to go outside those boots, You need to put them
Speaker 3: on your feet, like you actually need to go into
Speaker 3: the woods. I'm telling you twenty minutes a day. And
Speaker 3: there's tons of racharch that also supports us the idea
Speaker 3: of physical fitness, you know, physical exercise. These are also supporting.
Speaker 3: I just like to focus on the trees because I
Speaker 3: think that chemical stuff is really interesting.
Speaker 2: Now for more inspiration to lace up those boots and
Speaker 2: go bird watching or bug hunting or leaf caressing, listen
Speaker 2: to the recent forest Ecology episode with Kdub's the hiking Scientist.
Speaker 2: You can march forward, breathe deep, let nature help you.
Speaker 2: Then you know, check your crevices in private but trees
Speaker 2: so you go hop some bark, dude, so into that.
Speaker 3: Oh that is a great, great, great way to say it. Okay,
Speaker 3: here's another one. Singing. Singing is really good for your happies,
Speaker 3: especially if you do it it acquire or with a
Speaker 3: group of people. Now I know you're thinking, hey, wait
Speaker 3: a minute, didn't I just read a story about how
Speaker 3: like a bunch of people singing in like an indoor
Speaker 3: thing like all give each other COVID? Yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: well the research was done before. But like, guess what,
Speaker 3: whether you sing in a choir or you sing with
Speaker 3: a group of people, or when you're part of the
Speaker 3: social togetherness where you guys are doing something joyful like singing,
Speaker 3: it's really really good for you. And I know that
Speaker 3: it's difficult now, but if you're living at home with
Speaker 3: the family, can you turn on some music and crank
Speaker 3: it and like get into a family dance party, Like
Speaker 3: you can still do stuff like that. So maybe those
Speaker 3: are just some of the little quick examples. I could
Speaker 3: go on and on about things like meditation, which is
Speaker 3: really hard for people to do, but for you, right,
Speaker 3: Massives General Hospital shows that if you close your eyes
Speaker 3: into even two minutes of deep breathing, you increase the
Speaker 3: activity in your prefrontal quortex, the party of your brain
Speaker 3: responsible for focus and attention. You go from living in
Speaker 3: a washing machine to looking at a washing machine. Right. Wow,
Speaker 3: It's really hard for people to do this, but closing
Speaker 3: your eyes and doing a couple of minutes of deep
Speaker 3: breathing improves your happiness.
Speaker 2: My wonderful therapist recently recommended the four four five method,
Speaker 2: which is breathe in for four seconds, hold for four,
Speaker 2: breathe out for five. I do this all the time,
Speaker 2: and it really helps my brain say to my body, okay, okay,
Speaker 2: everyone's settled down. It's just cool the jets four fur five.
Speaker 2: Let's do this a couple of times. We're good. We're good, okay.
Speaker 3: So just reminder these things I'm starting to listen now
Speaker 3: here around, things like journaling, huffing some bark, singing with
Speaker 3: a choir, or meditating are just little things you can
Speaker 3: toss Ingredients you can toss into your recipe to build
Speaker 3: up that forty percent, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then how about in terms of happiness. I'm
Speaker 2: sure that you get asked this a lot, and you've
Speaker 2: had to do a lot of research, But what exactly
Speaker 2: is happiness? How do we even quantify that?
Speaker 3: Not everything can be simplified into words or numbers. So
Speaker 3: what the researchers do in all these studies that I'm
Speaker 3: talking about is they use the phrase subjective well being.
Speaker 3: There is no part of our DNA or anything that
Speaker 3: shows up in a blood test that tells us how
Speaker 3: happy we are. What they do and all these research
Speaker 3: studies is ask people, on scale of one to ten,
Speaker 3: how happy are you or with your life today? They
Speaker 3: ask people to do some of these studies journaling, exercise, meditation, etc.
Speaker 3: And then you compare yourself with both your past and
Speaker 3: a test group to see, hey, where were there increases.
Speaker 3: Now if you're like, okay, that's nice, that's like the
Speaker 3: research definition. But what is happiness? Like? What is happiness?
Speaker 3: Tell me what is happiness? Neil? Yeah, Well, there's an
Speaker 3: ancient Greek definition that I love that a lot of
Speaker 3: people quote, which is a wonderful definition, which is the
Speaker 3: joy you feel while striving towards your potential. Ooh, Okay,
Speaker 3: that's beautiful. The joy you feel while striving towards your potential.
Speaker 3: It's an ancient Greek definition. If you're like, well, give
Speaker 3: me someone else, give me some juice. Okay. Well, the
Speaker 3: book I already referred to the how Happiness says the
Speaker 3: experience of joy, contentment, or positive well being combined with
Speaker 3: a sense that one's life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile.
Speaker 2: Oh so it doesn't have to be perfect, easy or smooth,
Speaker 2: but meaningful, worthwhile and good.
Speaker 3: Right. Well, that's exactly true, because if you ask anyone
Speaker 3: who just came back from a five kilometer run up
Speaker 3: a rainy hill, I feel one. I feel so happy.
Speaker 3: So I'm just trying to prove that what you just
Speaker 3: say is true. Right, Like, we can separate the idea
Speaker 3: that I'm happy right now with the fact that I've
Speaker 3: done something that I feel is worth while and purposeful.
Speaker 3: So I feel happy because of that. I have never
Speaker 3: given birth, but I imagine giving birth might be kind
Speaker 3: of similar too.
Speaker 2: I yeah, I haven't either, nor have I passed a
Speaker 2: kidney stone. But I'm sure there's a lot of happiness
Speaker 2: that it comes to relief also sure, But what about
Speaker 2: when it comes to gratitude. I mean, we're kind of
Speaker 2: nearing a season of gratitude. What does science tell us
Speaker 2: about gratitude and subjective well being?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Sure. The most famous rasearch comes from Emmons and McCullough.
Speaker 3: And what they had people do is, at the end
Speaker 3: of each week, right down five things they were grateful for,
Speaker 3: or different test groups, five events or five hassles. So
Speaker 3: again you had to kind of plumb your mind for
Speaker 3: either five things you were grateful for, or if you're
Speaker 3: in different test group, five events by things that happened,
Speaker 3: or the third group was five hassles. Well, what they
Speaker 3: found is over a ten week period, the participants who
Speaker 3: were down the things they were grateful for were not
Speaker 3: only happy your but physically healthier. Okay, this partly speaks
Speaker 3: to some of our points earlier about how happiness is
Speaker 3: an indicator on health, lowering stress, increasing heart health, helping
Speaker 3: you live longer, et cetera. And so sometimes when I
Speaker 3: talk about this, people are like, well, that's nice to say,
Speaker 3: but what am I supposed to do, Like grab like
Speaker 3: a notebook and carry it around writing about ice cream?
Speaker 3: Comes like, no one's gonna do that. And so what
Speaker 3: I always tell people to do. Is a game that
Speaker 3: Leslie and I play at our house at dinner every night,
Speaker 3: which is called Rose Rose thorn bud Okay. So we
Speaker 3: go around the dinner table. We've got three little boys.
Speaker 3: They sometimes play well and sometimes they run around and
Speaker 3: throw a spagheti against the wall. But what the point
Speaker 3: of the game is is everybody goes around the table
Speaker 3: and says a rose, Okay, a rose, like my boss
Speaker 3: gave me a compliment, I got an assistant hockey practice,
Speaker 3: like whatever. It is, like some tiny thing you're grateful for.
Speaker 3: Then you do it again, you say another rose, okay,
Speaker 3: something else again. This forces you to think about it out.
Speaker 3: It makes you sort of fail, like, well, what really
Speaker 3: did happen today? Okay? You end up reliving it, which
Speaker 3: is good. Then we make space for a thorn. A
Speaker 3: thorn is something that did not go well. The goal
Speaker 3: of the room, of course, is just to listen right
Speaker 3: and just offer empathy in terms of body language and
Speaker 3: like an understanding nod, and then a bud bud bud.
Speaker 3: A bud is something you're looking forward to, okay, And
Speaker 3: it could be tomorrow I can't wait to watch cartoons
Speaker 3: tomorrow morning, or it could be like in a I
Speaker 3: can't wait to rent a villa in Tuscany when I'm
Speaker 3: one hundred and ten. Yeah, it can be whenever in
Speaker 3: the future. And so the game Rose Rose Thorn Bud
Speaker 3: that you can play with your family, with your friends,
Speaker 3: with your partner, whatever, is a nice simple practice to
Speaker 3: bring the gratitude research you asked me about into your
Speaker 3: life kind of naturally.
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm, Oh okay. And then we are going to
Speaker 2: get to patron questions because we have so many listeners
Speaker 2: who are.
Speaker 3: Very excited, including me. I'm a Patreon member. Oh you are, Yeah,
Speaker 3: of course. I mean it's a dollar. I mean, I
Speaker 3: gotta say it's a little steep, it's a little You're
Speaker 3: kind of pushing it there, like I was, like with
Speaker 3: a doll, I can do a lot with a dollar
Speaker 3: a month, but.
Speaker 2: My heart is cheap.
Speaker 3: I know, if I can help you pay the rent,
Speaker 3: like I guess, I'll offer a little.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it so much. I am so this is
Speaker 2: so amazing and sweet. Sometimes ologists will sneak in rent
Speaker 2: before their episode and become a patron so they can
Speaker 2: see what people are asking, which I always love to
Speaker 2: see them, like sign up right before but you're the
Speaker 2: fact that you listen to my pod. I can't process it.
Speaker 2: I can't handle it. I can't process it. Oh my gosh. Okay,
Speaker 2: we're going to get to pay our questions. You're ready,
Speaker 2: I'm ready. Okay. Am I playing it cool at all
Speaker 2: in this episode? No, not at all. It's no shame.
Speaker 2: I earnestly do not know how I bamboozle people that
Speaker 2: I admire into doing this podcast, But let's just say
Speaker 2: I'm very grateful for it. Also, I'm thankful for the
Speaker 2: chance to donate to a cause. Of the ologists choosing
Speaker 2: each week and Neil asked to go to Performance Based
Speaker 2: New York, whose mission is to commission artists whose work
Speaker 2: challenged the boundaries of live performance. In Performance Space New
Speaker 2: York is dedicated to supporting the creative risks taken by
Speaker 2: artists from diverse genres, cultures, and perspectives, and they've been
Speaker 2: raising money also to provide housing for black and trans
Speaker 2: housing insecure artists. So a donation was made in the
Speaker 2: name of Neil and of writer Roxanne Gay as they
Speaker 2: are teaming up on a charity drive, and there's a
Speaker 2: link to Performance Space New York in the show notes
Speaker 2: so that donation was made possible by sponsors of the show,
Speaker 2: who you may hear about.
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Speaker 2: Okay, back to as many questions as I can fit
Speaker 2: in my mouth, starting with one that may have been
Speaker 2: nagging at you this entire time. But yeah, there's a lot,
Speaker 2: a lot of people, a lot a few people asked
Speaker 2: Sarah Wilbert, Marty Goodwin, and Sarah Nielsen all asked about unhappiness,
Speaker 2: and Sarah says, why does it seem like our default
Speaker 2: is to be unhappy? Do you find that do you
Speaker 2: find that a lot of people feel that way?
Speaker 3: Well, I want to focus on the word seem there
Speaker 3: just for a second, because I do. I mentioned it earlier,
Speaker 3: and I don't think I've gone on a legit enough
Speaker 3: rant about this, and I really want to which is
Speaker 3: where you get in your information? Like I just if
Speaker 3: you're listening to oology is phenomenal, But if you are
Speaker 3: consuming any form of news media or social media, which
Speaker 3: pretty much everyone is, and everyone is to probably like
Speaker 3: addictive levels, let's just really watch it right now, because
Speaker 3: right now those business models are completely oriented to monetizing
Speaker 3: your attention by feeding you in negativity that is happy.
Speaker 3: Why is that happening? Well, because you got an almond
Speaker 3: sized thing in the middle of your brain from the
Speaker 3: oldest part of your brain, called your amygdala.
Speaker 2: The amygdala side note, is part of the limbic system,
Speaker 2: which scientists casually and kind of insultingly called the old brain,
Speaker 2: although the brain stem is said to be the oldest,
Speaker 2: oldest part. But yes, the evolutionarily oldest inner layers of
Speaker 2: our brains help us regulate survival functions, including the question
Speaker 2: that we ask ourselves hundreds of times a day, which is, well,
Speaker 2: this thing here kill me? Is this gonna kill me?
Speaker 2: Is that gonna kill me? Are you gonna kill me?
Speaker 2: Is this gonna kill me? Every time we do something
Speaker 2: scary like text a crush or make a presentation, cut
Speaker 2: our bangs, write an important email, et cetera, our brain
Speaker 2: is shrieking. This is gonna kill you, This could kill you.
Speaker 2: Just heads up, that's gonna kill you. Oh man, We're
Speaker 2: gonna die now. In the Ferrology episode with Mary poffin Roth,
Speaker 2: we dubbed the amygdala the screaming Almond of terror. It's
Speaker 2: very well meaning but a little dramatic, and.
Speaker 3: That thing releases a fight or flight hormone all day,
Speaker 3: all day, which is awesome for when you hear a
Speaker 3: stick snap in the middle of the woods in the
Speaker 3: middle of the night, you're like, is that a bear? Like?
Speaker 3: That's that is a great, good evolutionary thing if you
Speaker 3: are in an immediate emergency. Great. Unfortunately, that thing can
Speaker 3: be totally abused. It's while we all rubberneck on the highway.
Speaker 3: It's why when you get a blood test back from
Speaker 3: your doctor, you scan for the high cholesterol. When you
Speaker 3: get a math test back for your teacher, you scan
Speaker 3: for the one question you got wrong. Yes, you have
Speaker 3: thousands and thousands and thousands of positive reviews. But I'm
Speaker 3: guessing Ali that you look at the one that's one star.
Speaker 3: Sometimes you're like, where are that the one? The one
Speaker 3: jumps out for you?
Speaker 2: One hundred bazillion.
Speaker 3: One in ten billion for you, so good bye. Just
Speaker 3: I mean like, I'm a podcaster too. I do the
Speaker 3: sact same thing. I go, I go on iTunes and
Speaker 3: I'm like, wait, a man, like one person thought my
Speaker 3: voice was bad, like I must, I need to get
Speaker 3: voice surgery.
Speaker 2: As mentioned, Neil has a podcast called Three Books and
Speaker 2: you should listen. One day, I will be on. I
Speaker 2: already told him two of the books, and I already
Speaker 2: regret one because my amygdala likes to fear judgment. My
Speaker 2: amigla sees judgment as a cobra hiding in my toilet.
Speaker 2: I know that's bullshit. I'm working on it.
Speaker 3: So anyway, news media social media are the devil and
Speaker 3: they are totally mining our attention right now to feed
Speaker 3: us constant negativity. So I just want to before I
Speaker 3: answer it on as best as I can, you know,
Speaker 3: I will just say where you get your inputs, because
Speaker 3: right now it's super dangerous to be consuming the amount
Speaker 3: of news media and social media that we are that
Speaker 3: is totally overwhelming. You can't process that. Yeah, that's gonna
Speaker 3: that's gonna fry you, So listen to this podcast and
Speaker 3: then delete everything else.
Speaker 2: But but you know a lot of people actually Rachel's
Speaker 2: they'll be Florence on and Jen Renard asked about this
Speaker 2: particular thing about social media. Rachel says, how have we
Speaker 2: noticed that facing technology, integration and continued technological advances affect happiness?
Speaker 2: And have we noticed social media affecting happiness? I remember
Speaker 2: reading something that the refreshing social media activates the same
Speaker 2: part of the brain as slot machines, where because you
Speaker 2: don't know if you're going to get something good or bad,
Speaker 2: it's unpredictable, you keep refreshing. Do you find that is
Speaker 2: there research on that at all?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's you just quoted it. Like that's exactly it.
Speaker 3: Like the fact that you don't know if your picture's
Speaker 3: going to get seventeen likes or three hundred is what
Speaker 3: makes you want to check if you got it, if
Speaker 3: you've got a consistent reaction. It's similar to that study
Speaker 3: that they always quote and I'm gonna butcher it, but
Speaker 3: it's like, you know, the rats press the lever when
Speaker 3: they don't know how many pellets are going to come out.
Speaker 3: If there is always one pellet, they'll get bored. If
Speaker 3: there's always zero, they won't do it. But if it's
Speaker 3: like one, zero, seventeen one, they just keep pushing it
Speaker 3: because you don't know what's going to come. It's exactly
Speaker 3: what you call the slot machine effect on our brain.
Speaker 2: Just a quick aside, I did a deep dive fact
Speaker 2: this research, and I'm not going to derail us reading
Speaker 2: all the research to you, but pooh boy, howdy, there's plenty,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to link the studies on my website.
Speaker 2: But the bullet points are that anthropologists note that gambling
Speaker 2: becomes addictive because of the cycle of intermittent variable rewards.
Speaker 2: And doctor Natasha Shall wrote the book Addiction by Design
Speaker 2: based on her research into gambling, and she stated in
Speaker 2: a twenty nineteen Guardian article that quote Facebook, Twitter and
Speaker 2: other companies use methods similar to the gambling industry to
Speaker 2: keep users on their sites. And we have to start
Speaker 2: recognizing the costs of time spent on social media. It's
Speaker 2: not just a game. It affects us financially, physically, and emotionally.
Speaker 2: She says, Now, what does Silicon Valley have to say? Well,
Speaker 2: Google design ethicist Tristan Harris calls your smartphone the slot
Speaker 2: machine in your pocket a pardon me. Harris is Google's
Speaker 2: former design ethicist. Now in an article he published via medium,
Speaker 2: Harris writes, does this effect to really work on people? Yes?
Speaker 2: Slot machines make more money in the United States than baseball,
Speaker 2: movies and theme parks combined. So every time we post,
Speaker 2: it's like pulling that lever and we may get a
Speaker 2: windfall of likes or not. But going viral is also
Speaker 2: a jackpot possibility lurking in the back of our heads
Speaker 2: reading all of this research, honestly, like my spine tangled
Speaker 2: and blood rush to my face, just like I rate.
Speaker 2: So next time you have a choice between sitting under
Speaker 2: a tree for twenty minutes looking at squirrels or scrolling,
Speaker 2: just think of social media like a smoky, crusty casino
Speaker 2: serving you cheap gin mixed with flat PEPSI just desperate
Speaker 2: for you to empty your brain savings into their sweaty
Speaker 2: sausage hands. I'm so pissed.
Speaker 3: That's one problem of social media. There are others. Ah
Speaker 3: For example, there's a psychological problem of comparing your director's
Speaker 3: cut life with everyone else's greatest hits, no matter how
Speaker 3: good that burrito you microwaved today for lunch and you
Speaker 3: cod it and you chopped up little avocado and you
Speaker 3: put adulup of sour cream and you even melted the
Speaker 3: little cheese, and you have the special sauce that you
Speaker 3: really like and you put a little hallopenia. It was awesome.
Speaker 3: And then you go on Instagram and someone's at a
Speaker 3: lobster buffet in the Maldives, Like, it's impossible to feel
Speaker 3: good about yourself when psychologically you're told that you suck
Speaker 3: all the time. Kay, there's a physical problem with social media.
Speaker 3: We don't talk about this enough, but I think it's
Speaker 3: really worth mentioning. I went to my physiotherapist last year
Speaker 3: and I was like, my thumb doesn't work, Like I
Speaker 3: can't move my thumb. And she said to me, all
Speaker 3: we're doing is thumbs. Now. It used to be when
Speaker 3: you were a kid, you had like people had tests,
Speaker 3: remember signing casts, Like someone broke their leg because they
Speaker 3: jumped off the dangerous playground equipment. Well, now it's like
Speaker 3: everyone just has sunken eyes and broken thumbs and when
Speaker 3: you tilt your head forward, you apply sixty pounds of
Speaker 3: pressure to your spine. Okay, the human heads eight pounds. Okay.
Speaker 3: Now the third also starts the letter P. Three pieces
Speaker 3: in a oh psychological physical and I'll say physiological research
Speaker 3: from Australia shows that when you expose your brain to
Speaker 3: a bright screen within one hour of bedtime, you don't
Speaker 3: produce as much melatonin. That is the sleep HORMONI is
Speaker 3: what helps you get a deep ram induced sleep. So
Speaker 3: when you look at a bright screen within an hour
Speaker 3: of bedtime, guess what happens? You don't go that far
Speaker 3: down the rabb hole and then you wake up with
Speaker 3: even lower resilience, lower happiness. So what do you do?
Speaker 3: You see what Trump tweeted when you wake up because
Speaker 3: you don't have the resilience not to check. Okay.
Speaker 2: I just love how much Neil has geeked out on
Speaker 2: this and done research and cited studies, and I went
Speaker 2: and looked up every single one he mentioned and they
Speaker 2: all check out and they're going to be linked on
Speaker 2: my website. Now, social media has jacked our happiness and
Speaker 2: left us addicted, and they know what they're doing. But
Speaker 2: back to those three ps psychological comparing our lives, unfairly
Speaker 2: physical carpal tunnel, eye stream, and physiological poor sleep. Dang,
Speaker 2: that's too many peace already, and I'm peeved.
Speaker 3: If you want to throw another P in there, just
Speaker 3: for good measure, I will say there's also a huge
Speaker 3: productivity problem where research is now showing that we spend
Speaker 3: thirty one percent of our day bookmarking, prioritizing, and switching.
Speaker 3: Let me see that again. We're spending about a third
Speaker 3: of our day not doing anything but just deciding what
Speaker 3: to do. And if you've ever decided to hang out
Speaker 3: with yourself or your loved one and watch Netflix and
Speaker 3: you're like, oh, yeah, the partner's coming downstairs, just putting
Speaker 3: the kid to bed and let me drum up a
Speaker 3: show that we're gonna watch. And by the time they
Speaker 3: come downstairs, you spent half an hour like going on
Speaker 3: Rotten Tomatoes, trying to look up rankings and checking trailers
Speaker 3: on YouTube because you really want to get the p
Speaker 3: And then's suddst nine twenty. You haven't pitched a show.
Speaker 3: You're like, well, forget it, I'm going to bed. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And that's what we're doing all day. We're bookmarking, prioritizing,
Speaker 3: and switching between tasks. We're not actually getting as much
Speaker 3: done ironically. Okay, So those four p's, Okay, I just
Speaker 3: laid them on you.
Speaker 2: Okay. Recap, psychological, physical, logical, and productivity. Also, this guy
Speaker 2: has written books researching happiness. He found it a global
Speaker 2: Happiness Institute, and is telling you social media may be
Speaker 2: making you feel like garbage and it's okay to cut
Speaker 2: back on it for your sanity and for your well being.
Speaker 2: You don't have to bury your head in the sand
Speaker 2: or disengage from justice. But maybe read the news on
Speaker 2: a different app, sign up for informative newsletters, go to
Speaker 2: dedicated groups for certain causes. But just aimlessly scrolling through
Speaker 2: people's workouts and brunches and vacations and hoping that you
Speaker 2: get likes on yours may not be what your brain
Speaker 2: or the world needs.
Speaker 3: Are some of the problems of social media. Yes, it's
Speaker 3: a huge, huge problem. What I actually tell people behind
Speaker 3: to do and you didn't ask me this, but I say,
Speaker 3: get rid of that phone from the bedroom. Number one
Speaker 3: priority is get the phone out of the bedroom, because
Speaker 3: that can I can smile, alarm clock, go to Walmart,
Speaker 3: they're ten bucks. Oh I can, I can am very important.
Speaker 3: I get a lot of cls. No, you don't. They don't.
Speaker 3: Get a lot of emergency calls. You're lying. And if
Speaker 3: you really need emergency calls, get a landline. They're ten dollars.
Speaker 3: Now give the phone number to your director, report or
Speaker 3: your boss, or your mom or whoever, so you know
Speaker 3: you have the peace of mind of being reach a bull.
Speaker 3: And then when that phone's out of your bed, when
Speaker 3: you wake up in the morning, what you need to
Speaker 3: do is grab a pen, grab a piece of paper,
Speaker 3: and I want you to write down. I will let
Speaker 3: go of I am grateful for and I will focus
Speaker 3: on So I call this the two minute morning practice.
Speaker 3: Each of these three things or back by reaarch I
Speaker 3: can talk about that if you want so. I will
Speaker 3: let go of helps eliminate a regret every day. I
Speaker 3: will let go of how much screen time my kids
Speaker 3: are getting. I will let go of using the disposable
Speaker 3: mass for three straight weeks. I will let go of
Speaker 3: the fact that I had terrible mom guilt right now
Speaker 3: because I'm totally ignoring my work to just take care
Speaker 3: of my kids, or vice versa. So and this is
Speaker 3: research from Science magazine. The research is called Don't Look
Speaker 3: Back and Anger that shows that minimizing regrets as we
Speaker 3: age increases are happy.
Speaker 2: Okay, cook aside. This was a twenty twelve study and
Speaker 2: the full title is quote Don't Look Back in Anger
Speaker 2: responsiveness to missed chances in successful and non successful aging,
Speaker 2: and the researchers say that results suggest disengagement from regret
Speaker 2: reflects a critical resilience factor for emotional health in older age.
Speaker 2: So dang, if you have a no regrets tattoo, keep
Speaker 2: on not regretting it as well as not regretting other
Speaker 2: stuff every morning.
Speaker 3: So I will let go of. That's how you start
Speaker 3: your day. Don't have that stuff flowing around all day.
Speaker 3: I am grateful for number two. We already talked about
Speaker 3: all the research behind gratitudes. Okay. The only thing I
Speaker 3: haven't said yet, Ali is it's got to be specific.
Speaker 3: Don't say my husband, say when my husband Rodriguez put
Speaker 3: the toilet seat down. I'll say my dog say when
Speaker 3: my shit suit Toby learned how to shake a paw.
Speaker 3: Like be specific. The specificity is partly what's actually causing
Speaker 3: you to develop those positive neural pathways in your brain.
Speaker 3: To actually think of the things that you're happy about.
Speaker 3: And third I said was, I will focus on what
Speaker 3: luck We all suffer from decision fatigue these days. We
Speaker 3: need to carve a will do from her endless could
Speaker 3: do and should do okay, And it should be the
Speaker 3: most annoying thing, like it should be like calling my
Speaker 3: cable company, or like making that dentist appointment, or like
Speaker 3: finally putting the files in the garage or whatever. The
Speaker 3: annoying thing I will let go of. I am grateful
Speaker 3: for it, and I will focus on is a two
Speaker 3: minute morning practice that helps the other nine hundred and
Speaker 3: ninety eight minutes you're awake a day be happier. And yes,
Speaker 3: the average person's awake a thousand minutes a.
Speaker 2: Day, one thousand minutes a day.
Speaker 3: It's all you got, one thousand minutes a day. The
Speaker 3: average person is awake for a thousand minutes a day.
Speaker 3: Oh man, is everyone else trying to do the math
Speaker 3: right now? Hours of it? Like sixteen and.
Speaker 2: Two thirds hours a I know you always hear like
Speaker 2: Beyonce has the same number of hours in a day,
Speaker 2: she has the same number of minutes. She also has
Speaker 2: probably more personal assistance, but still she's doing something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I bet you she's not waking up and
Speaker 3: checking Twitter, though, do you know what I'm saying. I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't know Beyonce. I mean we it's just been
Speaker 3: a while since we last connected. I just think that
Speaker 3: like those people, I don't know why we're using her
Speaker 3: as an example that live their life with the deep
Speaker 3: intentionality and are thinking about how to consciously sort of
Speaker 3: imbue a bit more happens in your life, Like be
Speaker 3: intentional when you get up, Okay, don't let someone else
Speaker 3: tell you what to think when you wake up. The
Speaker 3: phone is designed to be a push device. It pushes
Speaker 3: stuff at you, alerts, text notifications. It's what everyone else
Speaker 3: has on their agenda. Yeah, Like big thing here is
Speaker 3: make it what's on your agenda? Okay.
Speaker 2: And that actually dovetails into some questions about self care
Speaker 2: versus selfishness Gracie Sesha, Kristin Hendricks and Laura Smith, Katrina Nujen,
Speaker 2: Tony Jane, Hillary Larson, and Earl of Gray Malkin, as
Speaker 2: well as first question asker Emily Okerlund and Kelly Seamen.
Speaker 3: Are you saying that all these people ask the same question?
Speaker 3: Are you just lumping them together.
Speaker 2: I'm lumping them together. Similar questions. That's just no similar questions.
Speaker 2: And Gracie says, how do you see the line between
Speaker 2: self care and selfishness? For your happiness? And Kristen asked,
Speaker 2: how do you foster happiness when you have a hard
Speaker 2: time feeling worthy or you're experiencing depression?
Speaker 3: There is an epidemic in our society today where we
Speaker 3: are not prioritizing ourselves before we are prioritizing others. When
Speaker 3: you go on the airplane, and I know it feels
Speaker 3: like a distant memory for everybody right now, other than
Speaker 3: you flying around doing your fancy film shoots.
Speaker 2: I was on a five am flight on Wednesday, but ps,
Speaker 2: I was flying for work, not for fun or leisure. Also,
Speaker 2: can you do me a favor? And can you cancel
Speaker 2: your holidays this year? COVID rates are surging in the US.
Speaker 2: And you will save lives, possibly the lives of those
Speaker 2: most dear to you and or your own, by sitting
Speaker 2: this one out and eating stuffing over zoom. Just cancel,
Speaker 2: Just do it now, everyone's going to be relieved. Anyway.
Speaker 3: Back to airplanes, and what do they say when you're
Speaker 3: on your five am flight? They said, if the oxygen
Speaker 3: mask falls out of the ceiling in the middle of this,
Speaker 3: put it on your mouth first before you put it
Speaker 3: on your kid. And for anyone that has a three
Speaker 3: year old beside them in an airplane, like you know,
Speaker 3: for those of us of parents, is like, I wouldn't
Speaker 3: do that, Like you would instinctively want to put it
Speaker 3: on your kid first. You want to feed your kid first.
Speaker 3: You want to just take care of your kid first.
Speaker 3: But the airlines are smarter than us. Sentences that have
Speaker 3: never been said. They know that you're no good. You're
Speaker 3: just no You're dead weight. You are no good to
Speaker 3: anyone unless you take care of yourself first. You cannot
Speaker 3: pour from an empty vessel. Self care should be your
Speaker 3: number one priority. It is more important to take care
Speaker 3: of yourself because you you cannot take care of anybody.
Speaker 3: You cannot help anybody. You cannot show up and do
Speaker 3: a good job for your boss, you cannot do a
Speaker 3: good job for your kids. You cannot do a good
Speaker 3: job for your sister or for your mom if you
Speaker 3: don't take care of yourself first. And so when I
Speaker 3: hear this question, what I hear is I don't like
Speaker 3: cause I get the version of the question that I
Speaker 3: often get is like, well, I'm taking care of my
Speaker 3: aging month full time. I don't have enough time to
Speaker 3: go for a twenty minute walk in the woods, Or like,
Speaker 3: how am I supposed to journal? Because you don't know
Speaker 3: my life, dude, and you don't understand that I've got
Speaker 3: three jobs and I'm taking public transit between them all,
Speaker 3: Like you don't get it. And what I always say is, yeh,
Speaker 3: it's true. I don't you know. We're trying our best
Speaker 3: to understand each other, like that's the point of humanity.
Speaker 3: But what I'm saying is, could you over prioritize, you know,
Speaker 3: the two minute morning practice for example, and then know
Speaker 3: that when you're doing that and your kid is crying
Speaker 3: because they just woke up downstairs, you're going to be
Speaker 3: a better parent for the rest of the day, you know.
Speaker 3: Could you do that if you just knew that it's
Speaker 3: better for everybody. It's not selfish, it's selfless to take
Speaker 3: care of yourself first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean it also can considering that emotions
Speaker 2: can be so contagious at times, especially if you're in
Speaker 2: like a close family unit, that taking care of yourself
Speaker 2: for two minutes or five minutes is probably going to
Speaker 2: be better overall for the people around you if you're
Speaker 2: not feeling, you know, wrung out and bitter and annoyed.
Speaker 3: Well, exactly, no, no, no, you're I think that's I
Speaker 3: think that's exactly right. Is that people say, is the
Speaker 3: glass half full or is it half empty? I say
Speaker 3: it's refillable. I say it's refillable. You get to decide
Speaker 3: how full you show up every day. I'm not saying
Speaker 3: it's easy. I'm not saying it's easy to prioritize, but
Speaker 3: I'm saying when you go through the difficult work of
Speaker 3: prioritizing it, you will reap massive benefits, and so of
Speaker 3: those around you.
Speaker 2: Also, kiddos, your old dad Wordbon podcast has been doing
Speaker 2: these things in the last few weeks since we had
Speaker 2: this interview. Per professional oshomologist Neil's prescription, I am pleased
Speaker 2: and astounded to report that I feel way the fuck better.
Speaker 2: Who knew that taking some time for myself to shower, unwind,
Speaker 2: read a magazine, rest, and just be a person would
Speaker 2: make me a better friend, a better girlfriend, a better
Speaker 2: human being, a better worker. I know things are really
Speaker 2: difficult with COVID scares and geopolitics and worrying about people
Speaker 2: I love who are sick. But I am so much
Speaker 2: better able to roll with things when I'm not afraid
Speaker 2: and burnt out and neglecting basic human needs like rest
Speaker 2: and grooming. Holy shit. So if you're like me and
Speaker 2: you heard this advice but you didn't listen to it
Speaker 2: for years, I'm giving you permission to take care of yourself.
Speaker 2: It's so important. You deserve it. We all do. Is
Speaker 2: this sappy and ernest? Yes? Am I apologetic?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: Okay, good question by a lot of people. Jessica Jansen,
Speaker 2: Bob Clark, Zoe Buckley, Tristan Vaughan, Skylar l prim Erka Perryandre,
Speaker 2: Nikki DeMarco, Sadie Baker, Katrina Indian and Madeline Winter and
Speaker 2: Ali Reel all asked essentially about happiness amid world chaos
Speaker 2: because I feel like we are living in a time
Speaker 2: of some real bullshit right now, and I find that
Speaker 2: my boyfriend goes through this a lot, and I, as
Speaker 2: someone who is raised as a Catholic, has difficulty when
Speaker 2: I see other people in pain, or when I know
Speaker 2: there's a lot of people suffering, finding happiness for myself.
Speaker 2: And Jessica Jansen wants to know, how do you feel
Speaker 2: COVID nineteen has greatly affected our happiness? And Bob Clark says,
Speaker 2: this is something I've been struggling with a bit with
Speaker 2: everything going on in the world. How do you keep
Speaker 2: up with current events and the climate crisis, racism, and
Speaker 2: basically just twenty twenty without losing some sort of lasting happiness.
Speaker 2: How can you stay positive when the world is literally
Speaker 2: on fire and it looks like it's gonna get worse.
Speaker 2: How do we balance being informed and empathetic and compassionate
Speaker 2: with also not getting too sucked into overwhelm Oh my god, Okay,
Speaker 2: this backstory, get ready big.
Speaker 3: So I mentioned a long time ago in this conversation
Speaker 3: that I used to work at Walmart, and what I
Speaker 3: didn't mention was what my job was there. So I
Speaker 3: spent ten years there. I had a number of different roles,
Speaker 3: but they were always in the HR department, and so
Speaker 3: sometimes I was in charge of leadership development, sometimes I
Speaker 3: was doing learning and training, and then for like a
Speaker 3: pretty challenging year, I was one of these people that
Speaker 3: helped bosses like terminate their employees, and so it was
Speaker 3: a terrible job, but also it was a real huge
Speaker 3: opportunity for empathy and compassion because I was, you know,
Speaker 3: helping bosses look at their teams and figure out what
Speaker 3: they needed because they had limited budget or headcount. And
Speaker 3: then I figured I was in the room for when
Speaker 3: these conversations happened. And this wasn't the only part of
Speaker 3: my job it was. It was probably the room for
Speaker 3: like over one hundred of these conversations.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: And then I was I was the one with the Kleenex,
Speaker 3: and I was the one walking them to help their
Speaker 3: collect their bags and or they're you know, put the
Speaker 3: frame brass pictures in the in the cardboard box and
Speaker 3: going to the parking lot in the middle of winter.
Speaker 3: And whenever I did that, it broke my heart and
Speaker 3: I couldn't sleep, and I was overwhelming. And people said
Speaker 3: the same things to me all the time. Out They
Speaker 3: would say, I thought I would be here forever. I
Speaker 3: don't know what I'm gonna do now. I I like,
Speaker 3: I'll never find another job. Like it was like a complete,
Speaker 3: complete emotional like shock, Like it was a horrible feeling
Speaker 3: for them and everybody around them at the time. However,
Speaker 3: I am Canadian, and Canada was kind of small, like
Speaker 3: just I live in Toronto and like just in retail,
Speaker 3: and you just bump into people again. And so over
Speaker 3: the years, I would inevitably bump into a number of
Speaker 3: people that were let go of their jobs. And you
Speaker 3: know what they used to say to me. Every single
Speaker 3: one of them said, it was the best thing that
Speaker 3: happened to me, every single one. I never had anyone
Speaker 3: not say that. I traveled to Peru, i became a
Speaker 3: nutritional supplement importer. I'm working at a smaller company. Now
Speaker 3: it's great. I've gotten promoted twice in the last two years.
Speaker 3: I used my severance to spend time with my daughter
Speaker 3: after her miscarriage, Like I would never have had that
Speaker 3: time if I wasn't forced to have that time. And
Speaker 3: it made me really question myself and like I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, Like, how could something that is horrible
Speaker 3: in the moment and you can use the pandemic or
Speaker 3: twenty twenty or COVID or I think you mentioned the
Speaker 3: wildfires or whatever, you could use that, but how could
Speaker 3: it ever later be perceived as like the best thing
Speaker 3: that ever happened to me. That doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 2: Obviously, things suck. Life sucks. People die, climate change goes unchecked.
Speaker 2: So how is possible the bad things can end up
Speaker 2: pivoting us toward positive things? Well, we need some science here, and.
Speaker 3: So I stumble upon this study which i'd like to
Speaker 3: quote for you now, which is a wonderful study. It
Speaker 3: came out in twenty thirteen, and it's called the End
Speaker 3: of History Illusion. Okay, it came out in Science magazine.
Speaker 3: It's done by Daniel Gilbert, who I mentioned earlier with
Speaker 3: the book Stumbling on Happiness, and a couple other of
Speaker 3: his peers. And what they did is they talked and
Speaker 3: interviewed nineteen thousand people between age eighteen and sixty eight,
Speaker 3: and they asked them essentially two questions. Ali Number one,
Speaker 3: how has your life changed in the last ten years?
Speaker 3: And how do you think it's going to change in
Speaker 3: the next ten And here's what was interesting. No matter
Speaker 3: what the person's sex, gender, nationality, religion, age, no matter
Speaker 3: what it was, they always painted a tempestuous portrait of
Speaker 3: the last ten years of their lives. It was like,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, Like Jordan and I broke up, and
Speaker 3: like I got this new job and we left San Francisco,
Speaker 3: and you know, I like we lost my mom and
Speaker 3: it was just a wild ten years all the time.
Speaker 3: But then here's the interesting part of the study. Whenever
Speaker 3: the people were asked, well, how do you think the
Speaker 3: next ten years are going to go, they always said
Speaker 3: the same thing, which is, well, it'll be exactly like
Speaker 3: I'm definitely not going to leave Boston now, like we're
Speaker 3: obviously I'm still gonna be with Randy, you know, Like
Speaker 3: it's like I'm these things are like consistent in people's mind.
Speaker 3: The researchers labeled this phenomenon the end of history illusion
Speaker 3: we carry with us in our brains. We don't know,
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's evolutionary, if it's a primal thing.
Speaker 3: We think that things are going to be how they
Speaker 3: are now. Which if you're flying high and you're doing
Speaker 3: great in life and everything's swimming, maybe that's not such
Speaker 3: a bad thing. But if you're stuck in your parents'
Speaker 3: basement and you can't find a job, you think, I'll
Speaker 3: never get out of this basement. If you're in the
Speaker 3: parking lot after being termaned, you're like, I'll never find
Speaker 3: another job. If you are in the middle of a
Speaker 3: crazy situation where you cannot see your family right now,
Speaker 3: and you have some illness in your life, and the
Speaker 3: pandemic is got a huge layoff in your job and
Speaker 3: you are struggling to find work. You believe that that
Speaker 3: is how it's always going to be, now, in the future, forever.
Speaker 3: That's how your brain thinks. That's all of our brains.
Speaker 3: And they interviewed nineteen thousand people. Everyone said this doesn't
Speaker 3: matter if they were seventy years old or if they
Speaker 3: were twenty years old. They all thought this.
Speaker 2: So when things suck, we think they will never get
Speaker 2: better and that no good could ever come out of it.
Speaker 2: The forecast is always stasis in our brains. And this
Speaker 2: study that Neil cited, the end of History Illusion, authored
Speaker 2: in part by Harvard's social psychologist Daniel Gilbert, went on
Speaker 2: to say, quote, people may believe who they are today
Speaker 2: is pretty much who they will be tomorrow, despite the
Speaker 2: fact that it isn't who they were yesterday. We call
Speaker 2: this tendency to underestimate the magnitude of future change the
Speaker 2: end of history illusion. They say that it was evident
Speaker 2: at every stage of adult life that the researchers could analyze,
Speaker 2: and they concluded the paper with this wallop of a
Speaker 2: sentence quote. History, it seems, is all always ending today.
Speaker 3: And so I love this study because what it tells
Speaker 3: you is we all suck at this, all of us.
Speaker 3: You know, you know, we are uniformly terrible of picturing
Speaker 3: the end of Okay, So now if you take into
Speaker 3: this incredible research study my other rant on news media,
Speaker 3: social media making us think everything's a little bit worse
Speaker 3: than it is because that's what gets eyeballs, and that
Speaker 3: therefore what MSNBC's goal is to feed you super u ads, right,
Speaker 3: Like the whole point is to feed you super ads.
Speaker 3: You know. Then it's like you take those two things
Speaker 3: together and we're kind of in a bit of a pickle.
Speaker 3: Our brains aren't capable of picturing the end of anything,
Speaker 3: right or change coming. We aren't good at that. And
Speaker 3: the orientation of everything we're looking at is designed to
Speaker 3: minor attention, so we keep looking at it so we
Speaker 3: can keep consuming more advertisements.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, Okay, so so many questions left. We're
Speaker 2: going to get in as many as we can. A
Speaker 2: lot of people and I will list their names in
Speaker 2: and aside essentially wanted to know looking at you. Elena
Speaker 2: Reynolds first, Time question asker Marcel al, Alicia Penny, Lena Fay,
Speaker 2: Alia Myers, Annie c and Low McDowell, who all had
Speaker 2: similar questions on the fleeting nature of the good times.
Speaker 2: The question that Megan Walker had, which is why does
Speaker 2: happiness often seem so delicate but anger and sadness are
Speaker 2: HEARTI as fuck? Any idea is happiness like a bunny
Speaker 2: that you're chasing around. We had bunnies when I was
Speaker 2: a kid. Sometimes they get out and they are hard catch.
Speaker 2: Is happiness a prey animal, and anger and sadness is
Speaker 2: a predator. What's happening is one type of emotion heartier
Speaker 2: than the other? I know for myself. I definitely ruminate
Speaker 2: on shitty things in an effort to untangle or fix them,
Speaker 2: but I do not often dwell on the good times.
Speaker 2: And Neil mentions the incredible work of legend doctor Lori Santos,
Speaker 2: who teaches Yale's most popular course called Psychology and the
Speaker 2: Good Life, which you can also find online if you
Speaker 2: go quote the Science of Wellbeing, and doctor Santos hosts
Speaker 2: the podcast The Happiness Lab because she runs a happiness
Speaker 2: lab at Yale, and Neil sums up some of her work.
Speaker 3: There is two ways, just two elements of happens that
Speaker 3: add up to happiness, which is am I happy in
Speaker 3: my life? And am I happy with my life? So
Speaker 3: Daniel Konneman, who's written a very famous paper called High
Speaker 3: Income Improves Evaluation of life but not emotional wellbeing, probably
Speaker 3: heard this before, alliot. It's where they talk about how like, oh,
Speaker 3: if you have making up the seventy five thousand dollars
Speaker 3: actually makes you happy, but beyond that it doesn't do
Speaker 3: do much, okay. So emotional being refers to the emotional
Speaker 3: quality of an individual's everyday experience, frequency and intensity of
Speaker 3: things like joy, stress, sadness, anger, affection that makes your
Speaker 3: life pleasant or unpleasant. Right, that's like in your life,
Speaker 3: how you do it? How you doing today? Now? Life
Speaker 3: evaluation that refers to the thoughts that people have about
Speaker 3: their entire life when they think about it as a whole. Right. So,
Speaker 3: I don't know if I necessarily agree with the idea
Speaker 3: that like anger is hearty as fucking happy and it
Speaker 3: is delicate. I just that that model. It's not something
Speaker 3: I agree or disagree with. It's just I hadn't thought
Speaker 3: of it that way before. I don't I don't know
Speaker 3: if it comes to but it does make me think
Speaker 3: of this other metaphor, which I think is helpful. Okay,
Speaker 3: So if you are able to say two things, am
Speaker 3: I happy today? Like with my life? I have a
Speaker 3: good day, Like I came home, we had a great dinner,
Speaker 3: and like I got to watch this on TV and
Speaker 3: it was wonderful and we had it made my special
Speaker 3: brownie dessert. Like okay, fine, you're happy? But then am
Speaker 3: I happy with my life overall? Well, that's another question.
Speaker 3: It's like did I make the right decision to go
Speaker 3: to that school? And like are we happy living in
Speaker 3: this city or this country? And those are bigger questions,
Speaker 3: But separating the two is really, I think relieving At
Speaker 3: least I find it that way because it lets you
Speaker 3: hold both in your mind and look at them and
Speaker 3: think about them separately, which enables you to navigate forward
Speaker 3: from there.
Speaker 2: Is happiness fleeting? Are we imagining that? Is there something
Speaker 2: wrong with your brain? If happiness is a beautiful but
Speaker 2: very fast bunny that gets chased and or devoured by sadness, worry,
Speaker 2: and guilt. Nope, there's nothing wrong with you, as it
Speaker 2: turns out, so news to me, I just went down
Speaker 2: many dark labyrinth rabbit warrens looking at studies, and it's
Speaker 2: part of our programming. So blame evolution that the less
Speaker 2: satisfied we are with our achievements and surroundings, the harder
Speaker 2: we strive, and the more resources and fitness we have
Speaker 2: to spread our genes. So a lot of past humans
Speaker 2: who are just stoked as hell to rest on their laurels,
Speaker 2: stopped striving and just died off. Now. In a two
Speaker 2: thousand and four study titled the Optimum Level of well Being?
Speaker 2: Can people be too happy? The authors wrote, people who
Speaker 2: experience the highest levels of happiness are most successful in
Speaker 2: terms of close relationships and volunteer work, but those who
Speaker 2: experience slightly lower levels of happiness are the most successful
Speaker 2: in terms of income, education, and political participation. So if
Speaker 2: it feels like you have to actively fight the blues away,
Speaker 2: well you do, and how do you do it? Gratitude
Speaker 2: it's a practice. It's not just a cheesy saccharin self brainwashing.
Speaker 2: It's necessary if you want to get some peace from
Speaker 2: your screaming almond of terror telling you that everything sucks,
Speaker 2: because not everything sucks everywhere. It's like elwink wants to
Speaker 2: know do different cultures perceive happiness differently? Madeline Anderson Ruda,
Speaker 2: Emmy mcghiney, arosemcathrine, Rob McGovern rin, Aberdy Kelsey Nalfa wants
Speaker 2: to know why is Finland or Eastern European countries are
Speaker 2: they away happier than the US? Ethan Batan wants to
Speaker 2: know why is Bhuton considered one of the happiest nations
Speaker 2: on Earth? So what is happening culturally?
Speaker 3: There is one giant global happiness report that comes out
Speaker 3: on March twentieth of every year. It's come out for
Speaker 3: I think eight years straight from the meeded nations. It's
Speaker 3: called the World Happiness Report. This is one of the
Speaker 3: few UN resolutions ever agreed to by every single member
Speaker 3: state in the UN. Like everyone's like, yes, we should
Speaker 3: do this, we should declare March twentieth International Day of Happiness.
Speaker 3: They did do that. That is happy, International Day of Happiness.
Speaker 3: Is what you should say on Mars twentieth. The people
Speaker 3: when you walk down the street and they then come
Speaker 3: up with this huge report which is put together by
Speaker 3: the notable of notablest you know, academics, positive psychologists, and
Speaker 3: they rank every single country in the world according to
Speaker 3: their happiness. And when you look in the data, you're like, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: they're using GDP per capita, social support, life expectancy, freedom, generosity,
Speaker 3: and corruption perception. Those are the six variables they use
Speaker 3: and then they rank them. And sure enough, I think
Speaker 3: someone says, like Finland is like the Scandinavian countries are
Speaker 3: at the top, Canada where I am, us where you are, Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: they're all hanging out up there. They're like off by
Speaker 3: like tenths of a percentage and stuff. But really, the
Speaker 3: way I take that report to rate, here's how I
Speaker 3: take that reportory. I look into all that data, I
Speaker 3: look into all the photos. I read the whole like
Speaker 3: one hundred page gigantic research report that comes out every year.
Speaker 3: Here's why I take it to be the majority of
Speaker 3: the happiness is baseline stuff. Do you trust the water
Speaker 3: that comes out of your tap? Do you feel safe
Speaker 3: when you walk out your front door? Can you marry
Speaker 3: who you want and live where you please. I'm not
Speaker 3: saying those freedoms exist everywhere, but what I'm saying is
Speaker 3: they make up a huge disproportionate amount of quote unquote
Speaker 3: like hygiene, happiness, like that's a really big part of it.
Speaker 3: And yeah, on top of it, the social support stuff.
Speaker 3: You know, a bunch of Norwegian dudes will hang out
Speaker 3: in like a like a you know, a big bath together,
Speaker 3: and we might not do that, so you might not
Speaker 3: have the bliss of hanging out in like the social
Speaker 3: support of a bunch of Norwegian dudes, right, like I'm projecting,
Speaker 3: But my point is there, like the social connection is important,
Speaker 3: and we probably aren't doing that part nearly as good
Speaker 3: as a lot of the country's near the top.
Speaker 2: Ugh, reminder too that for most of us we don't
Speaker 2: have to worry too much about what comes out of
Speaker 2: our tap, but thirty percent of the world does worry
Speaker 2: about access to clean water. Even in the US, water
Speaker 2: supply pipes in Flint, Michigan are still being replaced years
Speaker 2: after contaminated water flowed through taps, affecting tens of thousands
Speaker 2: of folks, which is a reminder that systemic oppression robs
Speaker 2: people of basic security, necessities, freedoms, and thus happiness. So
Speaker 2: equity breeds more happiness for everyone. Now speaking of toxic
Speaker 2: substances though, okay, well then this also you mentioned can
Speaker 2: you trust your tap water? And a few people asked
Speaker 2: about toxicity with positivity and Emily Oakerland and Laura Stacey, Cora,
Speaker 2: Lynn Hodnet, and Vesper Holly who Vesper also first time
Speaker 2: question asker. Same with Lynn. First time question asker, I
Speaker 2: want to know that, Lynn says, recently, I've heard the
Speaker 2: term toxic positivity. Is this something that's being researched and
Speaker 2: is there such a thing?
Speaker 1: Or?
Speaker 2: Vesper says, what are your thoughts about toxic positivity or
Speaker 2: the idea that a good ViBe's only attitude actually results
Speaker 2: in minimization or invalidation of the authentic human emotion. I mean,
Speaker 2: and I imagine this is why you do rose rose
Speaker 2: thorn bud. But yeah, like, how do you feel about
Speaker 2: those movements that deny the realities of suffering or pain?
Speaker 3: Going back to something I quoted it earlier, If it
Speaker 3: indeed is half genetic, ten percent circumstantial, and forty percent
Speaker 3: intentionial activities, it would be hard pressed to find anybody
Speaker 3: who's liked it all the time. No one I've ever
Speaker 3: met is happy all the time. I am certainly not. Okay,
Speaker 3: no one's like that. It is a practice, and it's
Speaker 3: hard work, and so the endless positivity that the person
Speaker 3: is referring to is something I've only seen, and I've
Speaker 3: only personally seen in some sort of like kind of
Speaker 3: phony ishu way.
Speaker 2: Okay, So toxic positivity means if someone comes to you
Speaker 2: and they're going through a hard time, it does not
Speaker 2: help them to say things like it'll all work out.
Speaker 2: Everything you happens for a reason, or at least your
Speaker 2: house didn't burn down. Now, acknowledging struggles and being authentic
Speaker 2: with your feelings and others is important. You cannot fake happiness.
Speaker 2: Even those who have incredible resources still struggle with day
Speaker 2: to day satisfaction. So remember for your own health, for
Speaker 2: the health of others, and just having the will to
Speaker 2: get sh done. To make the world better, you've got
Speaker 2: to wrestle with the internal and external forces that lean
Speaker 2: toward bummertown. And scientists know what can help us, whether
Speaker 2: the rough stuff better.
Speaker 3: We know journaling works, We know singing works. We know
Speaker 3: going for a walk in the woods worked. We know
Speaker 3: simple basic stuff works. If you think it makes you happier,
Speaker 3: because after you do your twenty minute exercise you feel happier,
Speaker 3: you're right, Yeah, if you thinks that it makes me
Speaker 3: happier to have a family dinner where everyone's actually at
Speaker 3: the table and people's selfhes our way. You're right, it
Speaker 3: does because you're connected socially the people you love and
Speaker 3: you feel good that you have. Oh, maybe my relationship
Speaker 3: with my son isn't as bad as I thought. Or
Speaker 3: maybe my relationship with my wife. Oh we like each
Speaker 3: other after all, you know, Like it's turns out that
Speaker 3: those things that you think are good for you really are.
Speaker 3: And sometimes I fear that as society as a whole.
Speaker 3: Part of what we're doing when we lean on all
Speaker 3: these things like what if the data say and what
Speaker 3: does the research tell us? Blah blah blah, what what
Speaker 3: have you learned about? It's like part of what we're
Speaker 3: doing in that entire world, Alley, is we're ignoring what
Speaker 3: we just feel. Yeah, and what we should just feel
Speaker 3: is like it's right to just take a break, rewind,
Speaker 3: get a good night's sleep, put the phone out of
Speaker 3: the bedroom, read a book, yeah, for goodness sake, and
Speaker 3: reading a book, don't read the internet. Read a book.
Speaker 2: Yeah. For more encouragement to read books. I'm just once
Speaker 2: again going to plug Neil's fantastic podcasts. Three books whose
Speaker 2: guests have included luminaries such as Malcolm Gladwell, Judy Bloom,
Speaker 2: David Sedaris, and one day some lady named your dad.
Speaker 2: So enjoy a book, which can even be free to
Speaker 2: borrow from a local library or if you download the
Speaker 2: app libby, they have free ebooks and audiobooks. So save
Speaker 2: that cheddar my baby. And you know what's funny is
Speaker 2: like in all of the things you've listed, you've never
Speaker 2: been like shopping buying things. It doesn't seem to do
Speaker 2: as much as bytonicides might. And Okay, I'm going to
Speaker 2: ask the thing that is the toughest thing about your job,
Speaker 2: which I know I can't. I'm trying to guess what
Speaker 2: the toughest can I I've never done this before. Can
Speaker 2: I guess what the toughest thing about your job is?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Okay, the thing that sucks the most about being someone
Speaker 2: who looks for the awesome in life. Okay, I think
Speaker 2: the shittiest thing about your job is people assuming you're
Speaker 2: happy all the time.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. No, no, I'm like saying, oh my gosh,
Speaker 3: because that's exactly what I was gonna say. Is there really? Yes?
Speaker 2: I got all right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, It's like I used to even go on stages
Speaker 3: and say I'm not an optimist. I didn't even have
Speaker 3: to like yell that, because it was like the presumption
Speaker 3: was people used to call me Captain Awesome. Like they're like,
Speaker 3: it's Captain Awesome because no one could pronounce my last
Speaker 3: name obviously, so it's like we're not going to try
Speaker 3: to say Neil pass Rica. We may as well just
Speaker 3: refer to him as mister Awesome or Captain Awesome. And
Speaker 3: it didn't help that the Book of Awesome, you know,
Speaker 3: it ended up doing super well. So of course the
Speaker 3: publisher comes back and buys a bunch of sequels, and
Speaker 3: I am too naive and simple minded to be like no,
Speaker 3: I'm like, yes, more sequels, more money, more books spread.
Speaker 3: So then suddenly there's like five journals and calendars and
Speaker 3: and there's like, you know, awesome sequel and the book
Speaker 3: it even more awesome in the Book of Holiday Awesome,
Speaker 3: and I have Awesome as everyone for kids, And suddenly
Speaker 3: I'm making Krusty the clown imitation gruel. This is Krusty
Speaker 3: brand imitation gruel, you know what I'm saying. Like, I
Speaker 3: then have completely enshrouded myself in this one word, which,
Speaker 3: according to Urban Dictionary, is how Americans describe everything. Okay,
Speaker 3: so now what I'm trying to really do in my
Speaker 3: own life as I'm forty one, now I'm getting there.
Speaker 3: You know, I was twenty eight tony nine i started
Speaker 3: doing this. I try to think about my life as
Speaker 3: I think, write, and speak about intentional living. Right, that's
Speaker 3: the high level framework I'm operating under. Yes, the Book
Speaker 3: of Awesome is about gratitude, but really the happiness equation
Speaker 3: is about happiness. My newest book is all about resilience,
Speaker 3: and the thing I'm working on today is about trust.
Speaker 3: So I'm really just trying to think of the gigantic,
Speaker 3: huge totems of life that make life beautiful, and how
Speaker 3: do we live these short thirty thousand days with intentionality.
Speaker 2: It's amazing that you have gotten to dedicate your life
Speaker 2: to the things and exploring the things that all of
Speaker 2: us put on the back burner and we think is
Speaker 2: going to be some sort of cabinet that we get
Speaker 2: to unlock when we deserve it, and you have gotten
Speaker 2: to explore that as a job like You've gotten to
Speaker 2: put that on the front burner, which is pretty dope.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I should mention that I did all this
Speaker 3: stuff on the side of Walmart for eight years, so
Speaker 3: like eight years this was my side has well eight years.
Speaker 3: The East Indian mentality burned to my brain said, do
Speaker 3: not quit your day job. You will have no one
Speaker 3: to pay your dental bills ever again, you know. And
Speaker 3: so this wasn't like a natural thing for me. I
Speaker 3: wasn't like raised by like a jazz pianist and like
Speaker 3: New York or editor. My parents were like hardcore immigrants
Speaker 3: from India and Africa. They were like a teacher and
Speaker 3: accountant in the suburbs. They were like, do not quit
Speaker 3: your day jub you already feel this by being adopting
Speaker 3: a doctor. And so all one hand, I just want
Speaker 3: to zoom up a second again and say sometimes people
Speaker 3: say to me, oh, it's really nice that you get
Speaker 3: to wander around all day and like write stuff. But
Speaker 3: I think it's the opposite. I don't get to do that.
Speaker 3: I am doing that because I wandered around all day.
Speaker 3: Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I think when
Speaker 3: you make space and time for some of the things
Speaker 3: we've been talking about today, waking up at the two
Speaker 3: minute morning practice, making space to go aside for nature, walks,
Speaker 3: playing you know, game like thorwn butter around your dinner table.
Speaker 3: When you do some of those practices, guess what, your
Speaker 3: mind relaxes, Your mind chills out. You stop getting obsessed
Speaker 3: with likes, stop getting obsessed, you stop. You just delete
Speaker 3: the apps off your phone. You don't even like them anymore.
Speaker 3: You know, You're like, well, I feel like a terrible
Speaker 3: person after an hour of liking instant stories, So I
Speaker 3: think I'll actually just read Pride and Prejudice, you know.
Speaker 3: And That's what I'm trying to now focus my life towards.
Speaker 3: And it's not because I'm good at It's because I'm
Speaker 3: trying to do it like I'm trying to you know.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 2: And what about the most awesome thing about being captain
Speaker 2: awesome osmologist. I'm just now, I'm just pressing your buttons.
Speaker 2: But we'll go ahead.
Speaker 3: And guess, since you're so perfect every time, No, what
Speaker 3: is the what?
Speaker 2: Okay? Guess I this is the first time I've ever guessed.
Speaker 2: I've never done this. The most best thing about being
Speaker 2: someone who looks for joy is hearing how it's changed people.
Speaker 3: No, I wish we had a measurement device that could,
Speaker 3: in one sentence, capture how many different octaves someone speaks in,
Speaker 3: because that would have been like twelve. That was so
Speaker 3: cute and beautiful and awesome. Honestly, it's probably that I
Speaker 3: get to make my kids breakfast and have dinner with
Speaker 3: them at night. Like, I know that sounds really trite
Speaker 3: and cheesy and simple, but I just think that I've
Speaker 3: taken a lot of flights, and I've sat outside a
Speaker 3: lot of people and if they had any gray hair.
Speaker 3: For the last twenty years, I have asked them, what's
Speaker 3: your number one piece of advice for me? As I
Speaker 3: live my life. I can separate the answers to that,
Speaker 3: Like informal twenty year research study I've been doing into
Speaker 3: two buckets. Half the answers are totally random, like don't
Speaker 3: put a computer in someone's bedroom or like you know,
Speaker 3: like whatever. But the other half were all the same,
Speaker 3: which is, have one more kid than you think you should.
Speaker 3: Go really one more kid than you think you should. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because they always say I had two, wish I had three,
Speaker 3: I had one, wish had two, I had zero, wish
Speaker 3: I had one, I had three, which had four So
Speaker 3: what Leslie and I are doing as I talk to
Speaker 3: she is pregnant with her fourth child, is we've just
Speaker 3: decided that, like this is it for us. We just
Speaker 3: want to have like a giant, loud, crazy, ridiculous, messy
Speaker 3: spaghetti on the wall family. And sometimes that means saying
Speaker 3: no to lots and lots of things. But I get
Speaker 3: breakfast with my kids and dinner with my kids every day,
Speaker 3: which is super important.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, congratulations, what flight did she take that
Speaker 2: pregnancy test on? She's gonna on a compute, like a
Speaker 2: commuter jet from Toronto to Buffalo.
Speaker 3: Yeah, only she only checks if she's pregnant on planes.
Speaker 2: Side note, if you can't biologically have children like me,
Speaker 2: or you aren't sure if you'd ever want children also
Speaker 2: like me, then just feel free to find and replace
Speaker 2: the word kids with dogs or cats or ferrets or
Speaker 2: tortoises or parrots or succulents, all of which can be
Speaker 2: just as challenging and expensive and rewarding as rearing a person. Well, obviously,
Speaker 2: this is just been an utter joy to have you on.
Speaker 2: I am so honored just to have your email at DRESK.
Speaker 2: I can't even tell you how exciting. I want to
Speaker 2: have you on.
Speaker 3: I love you. What you're doing is really special and
Speaker 3: rare and this is a real privilege and honor. I
Speaker 3: was so scared to talk to you because I'm like,
Speaker 3: I don't I haven't done anything of note, like all
Speaker 3: the people you have like I just shush, no, No,
Speaker 3: I mean like awesome ology like like compare the title
Speaker 3: like so, but I really appreciate connecting and if there's
Speaker 3: even like what I always say to people is the
Speaker 3: goals have to be perfect. It's just to be better
Speaker 3: than before. If there is even a nugget that resonated
Speaker 3: with one person, it was worth you know it. And
Speaker 3: I appreciate you having me on too, to uh to
Speaker 3: scream at people for a bit.
Speaker 2: The joy is oh mine. Okay, you're the best buye Okay.
Speaker 2: So ask happyish people honest questions, and remember that everyone's
Speaker 2: going through stuff, including yourself, and that you deserve the
Speaker 2: moments and the tools it takes to make feel better.
Speaker 2: So list some good stuff. Start a journal, maybe make
Speaker 2: a secret locked Twitter account where you can just catalog
Speaker 2: things to appreciate. Tell the folks in your life that
Speaker 2: you love them, and make new friends with people. You admire.
Speaker 2: I assure you it's very daymaking. So to get more
Speaker 2: Neil in your life, you can check out his website,
Speaker 2: very Easy Neil dot Blog. It's linked in the show notes,
Speaker 2: and I'm also going to post a bowload of links
Speaker 2: on alleyword dot com, slash Ologies, slash Awesomology, including links
Speaker 2: to his books. His one thousand Awesome Things blog is
Speaker 2: ted Talk, all the studies discussed, and the organization we
Speaker 2: made a donation to in his name. You can follow
Speaker 2: Neil on social media at Neil Pezrica on Twitter and
Speaker 2: on Instagram. You can find him on Facebook. We are
Speaker 2: at Ologies on Instagram and Twitter. I'm at Aliward with
Speaker 2: one lonely l on both. Like Neil is, you can
Speaker 2: be a patron of Ologies at patreon dot com, slash ologies,
Speaker 2: and as he mentioned, my heart is Cheap. It costs
Speaker 2: one dollar a month to join, twenty five cents an episode.
Speaker 2: Mybabes now Ologies March is available at ologiesmarch dot com,
Speaker 2: including the new masks we just got in a little
Speaker 2: more gratitude for my fellow sexy apes that make this
Speaker 2: show possible. Thank you so much, Bonnie Dutch and Shannon
Speaker 2: feltis for handling merch. You can check out their comedy
Speaker 2: podcast You Are That They're hilarious. Thank you Aaron Talbert
Speaker 2: for adminting the ologies podcast Facebook group full of wonderful
Speaker 2: curious folks. Thank you Emily White and the volunteer transcriptionists
Speaker 2: who make transcripts available for free. They're on my website
Speaker 2: for our deaf and heart of hearing friends or anyone
Speaker 2: else who wants or needs them. There's a link to
Speaker 2: that in the show notes. Thank you Caleb Patton, who
Speaker 2: adds leaps of modesty to the episodes so that you
Speaker 2: can download some Kids Say versions. Those are on my website.
Speaker 2: Noel Dilworth handles all the scheduling. She is lovely. Thank
Speaker 2: you to assistant editor and host of the mental health
Speaker 2: podcast My Good, Bad Brain, Jarreed Sleeper, with whom I
Speaker 2: have been quarantined since March, and whoms I am so
Speaker 2: grateful for, And of course the man who threads all
Speaker 2: our edits together, mister Mustache himself, Stephen Ray Morris, who
Speaker 2: also hosts a dino themed podcast called Te Jurassic Right
Speaker 2: and a kitty themed podcast called The per Cast. Nick
Speaker 2: Thorburn wrote and performed the theme music and if you
Speaker 2: head to the ologies Instagram, provided you do not spend
Speaker 2: a long time scrolling for the sake of your own brain,
Speaker 2: you can see Oligite and pod friend Heath Allen's excellent
Speaker 2: video reenactment of the theme song recording session. Thank you,
Speaker 2: Heath in a word, La Mau. If you listen to
Speaker 2: the end of the podcast, I tell you a secret,
Speaker 2: and this week's secret is I will reiterate I really
Speaker 2: have been feeling so much, weirdly better after this interview
Speaker 2: with Neil, and I've really just learned how much happier
Speaker 2: I am when I'm nicer to myself. And one thing
Speaker 2: I think that was behind that for a long time.
Speaker 2: I don't know if anyone else feels this, but there's
Speaker 2: a certain fear I think I've had that if I'm happy,
Speaker 2: people I love will reject me because they will feel
Speaker 2: annoyed by me. If I'm cheerful, or I have to
Speaker 2: be doing worse than other people around me or else,
Speaker 2: they'll get irritated at me. And I think that's something
Speaker 2: I've had in my brain for a long time. And
Speaker 2: I literally asked friends who I love very much, would
Speaker 2: you be annoyed if I became happier, and every single
Speaker 2: one of them was like, no, what, Please be happier.
Speaker 2: That's all I want for you. So if you feel
Speaker 2: like people will be mad at you if you're doing okay,
Speaker 2: perhaps sit down and think on that. Also think are
Speaker 2: those relationships good ones if you feel that way. So
Speaker 2: the world is not great, but there's a lot of
Speaker 2: great things and people in it, and so just like
Speaker 2: brush in our teeth, it's something to do for brain
Speaker 2: maintenance is to appreciate that. So I hope this episode helped.
Speaker 2: If it did, pass it on to people in your
Speaker 2: life who you think might enjoy it. Also, thank you
Speaker 2: for canceling your holiday plans to keep people alive. I
Speaker 2: know it's hard. Honestly, a lot of people say that
Speaker 2: they canceled their holiday plans and everyone on the family
Speaker 2: thread was relieved. So please do that. Someone very close
Speaker 2: to me just tested positive for COVID. She was completely asymptomatic.
Speaker 2: Keep that in mind, be safe, be good to yourself,
Speaker 2: and know that I'm very grateful for you. Okay, enough, sap, Dad, Okay, bryebye.
Speaker 2: Pacaderman's College Homeology, rydo Zoology, Lithology, New Technology, meteorology, scientology, nithology, seriology, selenology,