Advice from The Titans of Happiness on World Mental Health Day

The biggest names in wellness podcasting - "The Titans of Happiness" - come together to talk about the greatest mental health challenges facing us in 2024 and the very simple things we can all do to be happier. 

Joining Dr Laurie Santos for this World Mental Health Day special are: 

Dr Joy Harden Bradford, the clinical psychologist and host of the podcast Therapy for Black Girls.

Gretchen Ruben, the best-selling author, host of Happier with Gretchen Rubin and all-round happiness guru at GretchenRubin.com.

Dan Harris, the former TV news anchor who now fronts 10% Happier with Dan Harris and the online community at Dan Harris.com. 

And since this is an extra special episode, Dr Laurie invited one extra special guest, Sesame Street’s Elmo. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. This special episode of the Happiness Lab is brought
to you by State Farm. Like a good neighbor, State
Farm is there. October tenth is World Mental Health Day.

(00:36):
It's an annual chance to talk about our mental well being,
to take the opportunity to look at the challenges we're
all facing and explore strategies that we can use to
prevent things like anxiety, depression, and product stress. The world
of podcasting is full of shows with great advice on
improving well being, so a few of us decided to
get together and pool our expertise, and today's guest list

(00:58):
is pretty impressive, so much so that I've decided to
refer to today's crew as the Titans of Happiness. Doctor
Joey Harden Bradford is a clinical psychologist who you may
better know as the host of the podcast Therapy for
Black Girls. Gretchen Rubin is the og of well Being Experts.
She's written a bunch of best selling happiness books, most

(01:18):
recently Life in Five Senses. She also created a podcast
called Happier with Gretchen Rubin. Titan number three is Dan Harris.
Dan was a TV news anchor who, after having a
panic attack live on air, began looking into mindfulness meditation practices.
He now devotes himself to his podcast ten Percent Happier
and his new listener community, which you should check out

(01:40):
at Dan Harris dot com. And since I wanted this
to be an extra special show, I invited one extra
extra special guest. Earlier this year, he sent out a
very simple message on social media, checking in on all
of us. How is everybody doing? He asked. Two hundred
and twenty million people saw his message, and tens of
thousands of them replied all the way from presidents to

(02:03):
Paddington Baar. That post was made by my friend Sesame Streets. Elmo.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Hey, Elmo, how much happiness to see you again?

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Oh seeing you makes me so happy to Elmo, Elma,
thanks for being one of our Titans of happiness.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
I was a monster.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
Well, titans are kind of like monsters almost, I say,
a monster of happiness.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
So that makes imu a happiness master?

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Yeah, you totally are.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Are your friends happiness masters too?

Speaker 1 (02:34):
Kind of Elmo? This is Dan's Gretchen.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
Hello, Elmo, I'm happy to meet you and doctor Joy.

Speaker 4 (02:40):
Hi Elmo, hell are you you too? It's my pleasure?

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Oh cool, cool all right. So, first off, thanks to
all my experts who have come on and agreed to
be titans of happiness. I'm curious if that label makes
you feel uneasy as I've sometimes felt when I've been
referred to as an expert on happiness, because sometimes that
feels disingenuous when I feel like I'm working just as
hard on my own happiness and trying to figure this
out as much as everybody. I don't know if others
can relate there.

Speaker 4 (03:05):
Yeah, I will definitely say that doesn't feel like a
term I would give myself. But I think I am
also reminded that to be helpful to other people, you
only need to be like a step or two a head,
and so I don't have to be, you know, twelve
thousand steps ahead to be able to have something to offer.
And so I think I am getting more comfortable with
the idea that I've gone to school for a very

(03:27):
long time to share some things with my community that
can can be really helpful to them.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
Exactly. I would say that for me, research is mesearch, and.

Speaker 5 (03:37):
I'm always guided in my explorations by trying to figure
out what's going to work for me, and a long
way I find well, something works really well for some
people but not for me, Like meditation works so well
for Dan, I can learn from that. So yeah, I
don't think of myself as somebody who's figured it all out,
but somebody who's just really interested in exploring it and
thinking about it and trying to gather the ideas and

(03:58):
make sense of all the research and thought provoking ideas that.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
Are out in the world. Dan, does that resonate to
the idea of research as mesearch totally.

Speaker 6 (04:06):
One of my little jokes is that some experts teach
from the mountaintop and I teach from the fetal position.
And I very much have plenty of issues that I
struggle with, and you know, I think a cornerstone of
my work and I see this in all of your work,
which is why I'm grateful to know all of you.

(04:26):
Is a willingness to be open about my struggles as
a way to illustrate that it's okay to have your
own stuff and that there are ways to work on it.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
So you all here because I like to consider it
this group the Titans of Happiness, right, folks that I
turn to when I'm looking for a great advice on
how we can all improve our mental health. And we're
here on World Mental Health Day, and I think it's
a salient World Mental Health Day here in twenty twenty four,
becaus I think a lot of us are struggling when
it comes to our mental health, and the goal for
this conversation is to figure out some strategies that we

(04:59):
can all use to sort of feel better and maybe
even to do a deep dive into some of the
problems with mental health that I think so many of
us are facing. And I think a real big one,
at least when it comes to what folks like Surgeon
General'll talk about and so on, is loneliness. This crisis
that we're all kind of in need of social connection. Dan,
maybe let me start with you.

Speaker 7 (05:17):
What do I think of it? I think it's a
huge problem.

Speaker 6 (05:20):
We live in an individualistic society that's to a certain
extent healthy, but we have perfected the art of unhealthy individualism,
and it shows up over time in increasingly pernicious ways.
We're living alone and now with technology, basically everything about
modern life militates against actual human to human social interaction.

(05:44):
And I believe this is one of the contributing factors
to the epidemic of mental health issues. We're seeing anxiety, suicide, addiction, depression,
and loneliness.

Speaker 7 (05:53):
So what do you do about it?

Speaker 6 (05:54):
Well, one of the best tips I've heard comes from
the Surgeon General himself, doctor Vivik Murphy, and it's a
counterintuitive piece of advice. In part that's why I like
it so much. It is, if you are feeling lonely
to volunteer. Volunteering puts you in touch with other people,
reminds you of your own self worth. It's inherently ennobling

(06:18):
and kind of, as I like to say, you know,
it helps you pull your head out of your ass.
So that, to me, is the piece of advice that
seems to be among the most powerful.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
I love that because it, you know, first helps with
social connection obviously, which we know is important for reducing loneliness,
but just doing nice stuff for others is also something
that we know kind of makes you feel better too,
So it's kind of like a two for if you're
sort of volunteering and jumping in doctor joining your clinical practice,
does this come up? Do you have strategies that you
turn to when people are feeling lonely?

Speaker 3 (06:44):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (06:45):
Absolutely, And I just want to build on something that
Dan mentioned because I think the technology that we all
use in some ways, I think tricks us to believe
that we are actually connecting with other people. And in
some ways that's the case, but I think it is
easy to then forget, like, oh, I haven't actually seen
my best friend in like three months, because we just
keep up all on what's appen, right, And so I

(07:05):
think it is really important to pay attention to the
amount of time where spending on our screens. That is
one thing that I talk about pretty frequently in my practice,
and I'm on the podcast is really like auditing our
social media and taking account of how much time we
actually are spending on our devices, because I think it
is giving us the idea that we are way more
connected than we actually are.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
Yeah, it's kind of I joke with my students it's
like the nutrisuite of social connection, right, Like it feels
like we're getting some nutritious value from the social connection.
But if anything, it's like the opposite. If anything, it's
often at opportunity cost of the in real life social connection, right, Gretchen,
any other thoughts on kind of loneliness and social connection.

Speaker 5 (07:43):
Well, just to build on what Joy and Dan said,
because I completely agree, and I always remind myself that
IRL is better than URL, and you've always got to
like take those connections from the online version to the
in real life version, and volunteering is terrific. I mean,
one of the nicest things about human nature is you know,
do good, feel good really works.

Speaker 3 (08:02):
But I think any group.

Speaker 5 (08:04):
Joining any group is also a really good cure for loneliness,
Like whether that's birdwak, or it's a poker group, or
it's a book club, or it's a volunteer group, you're
meeting people at the dog walking park at the same time.
Because one of the things we know is important for
forming relationships is just seeing people consistently. The more we
see people, the more we tend to like them. The

(08:25):
more we see them, the more we can deepen our
relationships with them. And indeed, ancient philosophers and contemporary scientists
all agree that a key, maybe the key to a
happy life is strong relationships with other people. So when
we're thinking about how to spend our precious time, energy,
and money, you know, building relationships through volunteering, through groups,
through just a base to base meetup just really really central.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
I think it's also important that we need to build
on the relationships we do have too write and we
like get so focused on like, oh, let me find
new friends. And this gets to something I know that
Sesame Workshop has been thinking about a lot. Is this
idea of reaching out? Yes, Elmo, you know what checking
in with people is, right?

Speaker 2 (09:01):
Yeah, Well, Ione learned from his dad chucking them needs
to ask how people are doing.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
And you had a super big moment where you checked
in on how a lot of people were doing on
the social media site X.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
Yes, that's rue.

Speaker 1 (09:12):
What happened with that, bro?

Speaker 2 (09:13):
You know what? I want to ask how people were doing?
With help from his daddy, Amma was really glad to
hear from friends all around the road telling Alma how
they were fun. It's important to be able to tell
a friend how you feel, don't you.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
Think, Oh yeah, it's super important to be able to
check in on your friends.

Speaker 7 (09:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
So many friends had big funds and Alma was really
happy that they gets shaphim with Elmo.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
And in addition to Alma, we also have a visit
from Samantha from Sesame Workshop and Samantha, Hi, Samantha, do
you want to quickly introduce yourself. Hi. I'm Samantha Malton.

Speaker 8 (09:44):
I'm the chief Marketing and brand officer for Sesame Workshop,
the global impact nonprofit behind Sesame Street.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
And so, Samantha, I'm guessing that Alma wasn't the only
person at the workshop really shocked by the reaction that
he got when he was checking in on so many people.
Tell me what that was like for folks at the workshop.

Speaker 8 (10:01):
We could not have anticipated the reaction that we had.
It was just incredible, and what it signaled to us
is that there has never been a greater need for
the work that we're doing. We ask open ended questions
all the time Elmo with help from his daddy, but
this time this really touched people. The idea of checking

(10:22):
in on them sparked a response that was unlike any
other we've ever had. At SESME Workshop, over three hundred
million people saw his tweet and millions responded from world
leaders responding to everyday people who check on Elmo every day.
And I really believe that it's because of the relationship

(10:43):
that they felt towards Elmo. Is such a sense of
loneliness and people feeling like they are on their own
and it is so important to be able to check
in on a friend, a family member, a loved one.
One of the things that SESME has focused on. Now,
we just launched our Wellbeing Report in partnership with the

(11:04):
Harris Poles so that we could start to examine this
issue at skin Help. It's just astounding what we're seeing.
One in three parents feel that mental health is negatively
affecting their family, and it's over half of teens now.
I think one of the things that I am hardened
to see in some of our findings is that people

(11:24):
are much more apt to ask for help now. These
efforts towards destigmatization of mental health are really paying off,
particularly with younger generations. Gen X millennials feel much more
empowered to ask for help than previous generations.

Speaker 7 (11:42):
I mean, I think we also need to open me
to interrupt you. I got excited.

Speaker 6 (11:46):
There's a great expression I heard which has really become
a life motto for me, and it is never worry alone.
Is life advice par excellence. This is wisdom enshrined in
you know, sort of ancient traditions and modern psychological research.
And I love thinking about you know, this this study

(12:07):
at Harvard that I know all of you have heard
about the Harvard Study for Adult Development that has looked
at several generations of people in the Boston area to
get a sense longitudinally like what contributes to a long
and healthy and happy and successful life. And the one
thing that comes screaming out of the data most clearly
is the quality of your relationships. Because stress is generally

(12:28):
what kills us, and quality relationships mitigate stress.

Speaker 7 (12:31):
So never worry alone. And this is true even for introverts.

Speaker 6 (12:35):
You may not need as much social interaction as an
extrovert like me and perhaps Almo, but you still need it.

Speaker 4 (12:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (12:41):
I think one of the most interesting things is even
something like talking to a sales clerk or saying to
a passer by, oh, what a cute dog.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
That we get a lift.

Speaker 5 (12:49):
Even from these like very minor exchanges with other people,
which is another reason why being socially isolated is so
bad for us. We're social creatures. We're meant to be
feeling like we're part of a community, and so sometimes
if you're feeling low and lonely, just walking outside and
just having these little exchanges with just the people in
your neighborhood, good thing that itself can be a small

(13:14):
but meaningful step to take.

Speaker 6 (13:15):
It's just interesting, there's so much data. I've interviewed this
woman on my podcast. I suspect some of you may
have already talked to her, Barbara Frederickson, who's done all
this work on micro interactions and how these as Gretchen
was describing, talking to the barista or the sales clerk
or somebody in the street with a cute dog, this
is not trivial stuff. It adds up to real boosts

(13:38):
and happiness.

Speaker 4 (13:39):
I was gonna say, I, you know, know, so much
was written during the pandemic and kind of right after
about how we lost so many of those micro interactions.
Right like, so I was talking to the sales clerk,
and I think we're still in a pattern of like
re establishing that, which is difficult because so many people
are continuing to work from home. And so I think
we do have to kind of train that muscle again
to kind of reconnect to those small ways we connected

(14:01):
with other people.

Speaker 5 (14:02):
But you know, and I think one of the sort
of dangerous things about loneliness is there is a tendency
when we become lonely to withdraw. You would think that
when someone becomes lonely, they would become more and more
excited to like engage, But that doesn't always happen. Sometimes
you know, you want to pull back. It feels more
and more awkward. And as Joy was saying, kind of
the whole COVID period kind of retrained us, and so

(14:23):
it might feel more effortful to step out and have
those little conversation or big conversations if you've sort of
adjusted to not doing it or just connecting through social media.
And so I think there's sort of a feeling that, well,
if I'm lonely, of course I'll jump at the chance
to go to a party or jump at the chance
to go to a neighborhood barbecue. But maybe that's not

(14:44):
how it will feel. Maybe it will feel really hard
and you think, oh, you know, it's just not worth it.
I'll just stay at home like I got plenty to do,
and you lose touch with how energizing and important or
just like our sense of vitality and well being, these
big and small interactions are.

Speaker 6 (15:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
Nick Kepplie, who we've had on our podcast before, talks
about that we have to get over this sort of
speed bump of social connection.

Speaker 3 (15:07):
It's a perfect metaphor.

Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yes, friction, it's not too bad. It's like a little speed,
but it can stop you.

Speaker 5 (15:12):
It can stop you totally, just having to get put
on real clothes.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
So beauty of connecting over you know, like zoom or
the kinds of things we're connecting over now is that
you don't have to have real shoes. It's nice, but.

Speaker 9 (15:23):
That the joy, that's the joy, and that's it at
the end. You know, Ella loves talking to out of you.
But but there's times that tangoes walk. So Emma will
be back soon, not Toitans of Happiness will be looked back.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
One of my own mental health challenges in twenty twenty
four is worrying about big global issues. The news seems
especially relentless and grim these days. Many of us seem
so divided over what actions to take. Sometimes it feels
difficult to think about happier, nicer things closer to home.
So I decided to ask my Titans of Happiness about
this quandary, starting with doctor Joy Harden Bradford.

Speaker 4 (16:07):
Yeah, so I will go back to intention to how
much time you're spending on your screen, because it is
very easy to fall down a rabbit hole of like
watching traumatic video after traumatic video and you look up
and it's been four hours and you feel awful, and
so I think that it really is important to do that.
I'm a huge fan of dance parties and hula hooping
in the middle of my kitchen. Getting those endorphins going

(16:28):
and physical activity is really really good, and so you know,
I think people joke about, like, oh, go outside and
touch grass, but being grounded and getting engaged in some
physical activity can really help to manage some of the stress.
And I think that that often feels minute in comparison
to all of the tragedies and the stress that's happening
in the world, but those little things do add up

(16:49):
and can provide a buffer for some of the more,
you know, difficult experiences we have.

Speaker 1 (16:54):
Gretchen any reactions to that much, well.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
Absolutely, and just building what Joy said.

Speaker 5 (16:58):
I think that sometimes people feel like it's kind of
selfish to worry about our own happiness or our own wellbeing,
and we think, well, you know, in a world full
of suffering and injustice, it's not appropriate for me morally
to think about my own happiness. But what the research shows,
and I think we all see this in our own
lives is the people who work on being happier, calmer.

(17:18):
They are the people that are most able to think
about the problems of the world and to help out
when their community or their family member, or their neighbor
or their friend needs a hand. And so it you know,
it isn't selfish to think about our own happiness because
that's what helps us to turn out word to think
about the problems of other people and the problems of
the world. So you know, you're saying like, well, yeah,

(17:39):
is me doing some hula hooping going to help the world,
And you're like, you know what actually might because that
moment of hula hooping or that dance party might be
what you need to kind of give yourself the emotional
wherewithal to really engage with the bigger problems of the world.
You know, when we give more to ourselves, we can
ask more from ourselves. But just like on the idea
of like a simple hack like the hula hooping, I'm

(17:59):
that big fan of scheduling time to worry. If you
kind of have worry, that just kind of you know,
just take over your whole calendar. If I just say like, Okay,
I'm gonna worry about this from three to t three thirty,
and I get out my pen and paper and I'm like,
all day long, I'm like, I'm not gonna worry about
this now because I've got my time to worry. And
then because you know, often it's really there's a lot
of good that can come from worry. But then it

(18:20):
just stays contained and it stays constructive because I'm in
a mental state to deal with it, and I've got
my pen at my paper so i can write it
to the list or follow up on things that I
need to get done. So it's a much more constructive
kind of worry than the kind of rumination or just
sort of floating negative thoughts that are just kind of constantly,
you know, flitting around my mind, distracting me and draining
me all day long. So maybe it's once a day,

(18:41):
maybe it's twice a day, maybe it's once a week.
But I think that, as funny as it sounds, scheduling
time to worry has really.

Speaker 1 (18:47):
Proved to be useful for me to love that. It
seems like you also do it with a pen and
paper in your hand, right, which might turn that worry
into something more like expressive writing or journaling, Right, where
you kind of go into problem solving mode as opposed
to kind of ruminative loop mode where you just stay
there forever.

Speaker 5 (19:01):
Exactly where you're just going over and over and over
it without yeah, pinning it down or taking action.

Speaker 1 (19:06):
Absolutely, and so Dan, when we think about stress, other
ways we can hack our body. You know, Joy talked
about kind of you know, movement and kind of dance
parties and moving our body. I'm thinking of more like
direct hacks to the fight or flight mechanism, anything that
you've gotten from your meditation practices of how we can
do this better.

Speaker 6 (19:22):
Well, just a plus one. I mean, I'm taking notes here.
I love scheduling time for worry, and I am going
to invest in a hula hoop and I.

Speaker 3 (19:33):
The next time we get together, we'll have a hula
hoop content.

Speaker 6 (19:37):
And I also, you know, I just to totally agree
with what you were saying, Gretchen about how this is
not selfish. You really do want to take care of
yourself because it makes you a better citizen, a better
family member, a better contributor. Yes, But to answer the
question you asked, Yeah, to me's what's been incredibly helpful
to me in terms of burnout, and I'll be honest,
I do tend toward burnout. I can be a workaholic.

(20:02):
What's been incredibly helpful for me is self compassion. I
suspect all of you are familiar with the work of
doctor Kristin and her colleague, doctor Christopher Bermer. They actually
have a book coming out soon on self compassion for Burnout,
and I'll give you one a brief description of what
self compassion is, and then one little practical exercise. You

(20:22):
can think of self compassion really as the opposite of
our habitual inner critic. Most of us talk to ourselves
like a drill sergeant, and we think that's the best
way to be effective. However, decades of research into self
compassion has shown that if you can change your inner
dialogue to a supportive coach, that makes you more effective,

(20:44):
better able to reach your goals and establish habits, et cetera,
et cetera. And so for me, as cheesy as I
found this at first, it's been transformative. So here is
what doctor Kristen Nef calls a self compassion break, and
it's really three steps. The first thing to do is
just to be mindful of what's happening right now, like, yeah,

(21:04):
this is a moment that sucks. Step number one not
hard to recognize that whatever you're dealing with right now,
you are not alone. There are millions of other people
on planet Earth feeling burnt out or depressed or lonely
or whatever it is you're dealing with right now. This
is a common human condition. Three is to direct some

(21:26):
kindness towards yourself. And this is where for skeptics like
me and anti sentimentalists like me, it can.

Speaker 7 (21:31):
Get a little weird.

Speaker 6 (21:32):
But there's a bunch of data to show that if
you do two things simultaneously. One, talk to yourself the
way you would talk to a good friend. So for me,
it's like, dude, yes this sucks right now, and you've
got support and you have a plan or whatever it is.
I talk to myself the way I would talk to
my son or a friend. And to supercharge that, put

(21:53):
your hand on your heart, which I mean, I don't
do this with anybody watching. But again, there's a lot
of data to show that this can activate the mammalian
care system. We're very good, many of us at taking
care of our friends and family, not so good at
taking care of ourselves. But you can channel that inner
capacity for mentorship and direct it towards yourself, and to me,

(22:15):
that's just incredibly good news.

Speaker 5 (22:17):
I just want to underscore something that Dan mentioned in Passing,
which is that this is really good for people who
are working on their habits, because a lot of times,
when we're trying to be happier or more socially connected,
we might be working on a habit that we think
will help us achieve that aim. And just like Dan
was saying, sometimes people think that they're really tough on
themselves if they are that drill sergeant, that will sort
of energize them to do a better job with their

(22:37):
habits if they've kind of fallen off the path.

Speaker 3 (22:40):
But in fact, just as.

Speaker 5 (22:41):
Dan was saying, that people actually are more likely to
re engage and sort of like try again if they
say things to themselves like, well I learned that lesson
the hard way, or I won't make that mistake again,
or that wasn't my best day. You know what did
I learn from how that went wrong? And so again
that self compassion is so important and sort of however
we might be coming down hard on ourselves it feels

(23:03):
like it would be productive, but it really isn't.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
Yeah. I also love this idea of talking to yourself
like you talked to friend, because I feel like that
fights one of the criticisms I often get from my
students about self compassion, which is that they confuse it
with self indulgence. Right. They think that means like you're
letting yourself off the book. Even your habits have been crappy,
you're not going to kind of follow up with yourself.
If you really think about how you talk to a friend,
you wouldn't do that right if your friend was really

(23:27):
messing up, you would be like, it's fine, like you
do you, but you wouldn't scream at them like a
drill sergeant either. You'd get like curious. You'd be like,
I care about you, what's going on? How can I help?
How can we problem solve? And it's kind of bringing
that like compassionate curious problem solving, which is the thing
we naturally do with our care system for friends. We
just like rarely apply it to ourselves.

Speaker 6 (23:46):
And if you want to get granular about positive self talk,
there's been some research done by Ethan Cross at the
University of Michigan. He wrote a book called Chatter by
the Way that's that's very good. And he has shown
that if you use your own name when you're talking
to yourself, it actually provides some distance that is helpful.
So Gretchen X and Y reassuring notions, if you just

(24:08):
put Gretchen before the reassuring notions, it can help. I
often say dude or bro because I'm you know, like ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
So now we're going to jump into something else that,
at least for me, it becomes a problem with my
own mental health. So I assume this is the kind
of thing the world is facing as well, which is
that it seems like it's harder and harder to just
be present. I was talking with a friend the other
day who was saying that she just feels like she's
always in due mode, and it just feels really impossible,
especially today, just to be in like being mode, where

(24:37):
she's just kind of like existing in the world without
that constant to do list in her head or kind
of beating herself up, or just feeling like there's more
and more to be done. Dan, I know this is
something you talk about a lot on the podcast and
in your work. Any suggestions for us.

Speaker 6 (24:52):
Okay, well, I'm kind of known as mister meditation now.
But I really try to be very flexible and non
dogmatic in my evangelizing for this practice, because I have
a ton of sympathy for people who feel time starved.
I feel that way myself, and so I don't want
people to think that if they are interested in experimenting

(25:14):
with meditation, that it's going to be some big stressful
thing they need to add to their to do list.
As we know, Gretchen really is the expert here in
habit formation. But as we know, or at least as
I think I know from the data around human behavior
change and habit formation, one of the best ways to
start is to start small. And so my little mantras

(25:35):
or slogans on this score are one minute counts and
daily ish. So what you want is to start inserting
these little moments of mindfulness, of calm, of non doing,
of just being into your day in a very gentle way.
It's okay if you miss a week, it's okay if

(25:57):
you miss a year. You can always start again. And interestingly,
and we can talk a little bit more about the
mechanics of meditation if you want, but I'm really focusing
in this first answer on the habit formation part of it.

Speaker 7 (26:09):
I don't have time for it concern.

Speaker 6 (26:11):
I think actually that falling off the wagon is a
real opportunity. I get people who tell me all the time,
I can't be consistent with this, but those times when
you are no longer meditating, that is an opportunity to
notice the increasing toxicity in your mind and use that
to fuel intrinsic motivation to go back to the practice.

(26:33):
Because extrinsic motivation, a person like me wagging his finger
at you is way less powerful than intrinsic motivation, and
that can get you back on the cushion.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
Yeah. I really love this advice that it can be small,
because I think for a lot of us, when we
think about developing a meditation practice, it feels like we're
like about to start running a marathon. Right, It's just
another thing on my to do list. I got to
do it twenty minutes every day. And that idea that
like one minute is enough or even like just a
deep beller breath, like a.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
Oh yeah, dotty breasts. IMA's really good at those. Oh,
can i'man do one?

Speaker 3 (27:06):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yes, that's great. Do you want to try Amy's up together?

Speaker 2 (27:09):
Okay, first you put your hands on your belly like this,
take a slow, deep brip in through your nose and
a snow deep breath out through your mouth, and if
you do that a couple of times, you'll feel really calm.

Speaker 3 (27:27):
Elmo.

Speaker 4 (27:28):
Do you ever feel sad or angry?

Speaker 8 (27:30):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (27:31):
Sometimes Emma doesn't love feeling angry or sad, though, you know, Emma,
what does feeling to just go right around?

Speaker 1 (27:37):
So, Samantha, I know Sasame Workshop is putting together all
kinds of resources to help people with their mental health
and emotional wellbeing. Do you have any strategies you really recommend?

Speaker 8 (27:45):
Yeah, you know, we have a really easy three step strategy.
We say, I notice, yep, Elmon notices I feel Elmo
feels and I can't Ema. Can I notice means start
to feel what's going on in your body? Are you
getting butterflies in your stomach?

Speaker 2 (28:06):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (28:06):
I feel name.

Speaker 8 (28:08):
That What is that butterflies feeling? Is it nervousness? Is
it excitement? And then I can how to manage through
that emotion. So we could do some belly breathing, just
like Elmo taught us how to do.

Speaker 3 (28:22):
Yeah, what do you think?

Speaker 4 (28:25):
I think that that's such a cool idea and a
great way, especially for young people to be able to
practice this being grounded in the present moment. And I think,
you know, when I think about like my childhood, I
don't remember any lessons on like meditation and like slowing down.
And so it's so cool that like my kids are
talking about that in school, and like Sesame is doing
this kind of thing, because I think, going back to

(28:47):
our conversation about self compassion, like I think we get
very critical that we can't do this thing that we
know will help us, but so many of us have
not been taught to do that, and so I think
it really is a very tangible and like concrete way
to give voice to this thing that often feels very abstract.

Speaker 1 (29:02):
So I know, Dan, you've done a lot of work
teaching people to meditate, especially teaching folks who've never made
it taked before, or maybe even are scared of meditation
or cynical about meditation, to meditate. If somebody's listening to
this on World Mental Health Day and wants to try
out meditation for the first time, what's the first step?

Speaker 6 (29:16):
The skeptics, the time starve, the people who think this
is not for me, those are my people. So I
am not going to give you some long treatise on meditation.
I'm just going to give you a very brief description
on how one can do beginning mindfulness meditation. There are
really only three steps. The first is to find a

(29:37):
reasonably comfortable position in a reasonably quiet place, close your eyes.
Second step is to bring your full attention to the
feeling of your breath coming in and going out. You
don't have to breathe in any special way, just feel
the raw data of the physical sensations of your belly
rising and falling, or the air entering and exiting your nose.

(30:01):
Some people don't like feeling the breath. If that's you,
you can just feel the sensations of your full body
sitting in the chair, or you can focus on sounds
in the environment. Really just picking something neutral, something sense based,
to commit to for a couple of minutes or even
just a minute. And then the third step is the
most important for most of us. As soon as we

(30:23):
try to do this seemingly easy thing of just like
feeling the breath coming in and going out, or feeling
what it's like to be sitting in a chair, the
mind goes into mutiny. Mode, and you start like, you know,
what's for lunch? Do I need a haircut? Where do
gerbils run wild?

Speaker 7 (30:37):
Whatever?

Speaker 6 (30:37):
All these random thoughts start flitting through the mind. And
this is the moment when most people believe they have
failed at meditation. In fact, this is the moment that
proves that you are succeeding. Because the whole game in
meditation is not to achieve some sort of special state.
As I often joke, clearing the mind is impossible unless

(30:58):
you're enlightened or you've died. The whole goal in meditation
is just to notice when you've become distracted and to
start again, and again and again. And this beginning again
is like a bicep curl for your brain. It shows
up on the brain scans of people who meditate. And
why it's important is every time you notice how wild
your mind is, you get more familiar with the nature

(31:21):
of your mind and therefore less owned by every random
thought or urge or emotion that overtakes you. And so
this is very simple, but not easy practice can have
radical implications.

Speaker 7 (31:36):
I got Gretchen to meditate after years of trying.

Speaker 3 (31:38):
It doesn't work for me.

Speaker 5 (31:39):
It's not a tool that works for me, I had
tried it a couple of times, and I tried it
twice more because Dan is so persuasive, But I don't
know tool fits every hand.

Speaker 7 (31:49):
That's true, that's true.

Speaker 1 (31:51):
But Gretchen, it strikes me that a lot of your
sensory work is a form of meditation. Right Like when
you talk about kind of walking around, kind of experiencing
the world and smelling, that's kind of a mindful walk too.

Speaker 5 (32:02):
Okay, Well, here's the thing, and we may disagree, but Dan,
to me, an essential part of meditation is to discipline
the mind. You're asking your mind to try to do something.
And when I'm doing it, I'm just roaming free. I'm
letting my mind off the leachs. I'm just the dog

(32:22):
following the smells through the forest. I'm not trying to
do anything specific. And so to me, those two things
feel very different.

Speaker 7 (32:31):
Wait. Wait, I got it. I gotta respond to that.

Speaker 5 (32:32):
I gotta Dan and I have gone over and back
and back and forth because he wants to claim that
everything is meditation, but there has to be something that
is not.

Speaker 6 (32:41):
No, I don't feel also a mental I don't feel
like everything's meditation. If you're sitting down and making the
affirmative decision to plan lunch. That's not meditation, Like I
get it. That's using thought, which is great, that's a
beautiful thing. It's but it's not meditation.

Speaker 3 (32:54):
What about daydreaming? Is daydreaming meditation?

Speaker 5 (32:57):
Now I'm daydreaming and tuning into Central Park, and I'm
just wandering in and out of my own thoughts, the sky,
the leaves, my lunch, my calendar, the moss.

Speaker 3 (33:10):
Is that meditation?

Speaker 7 (33:11):
Okay?

Speaker 6 (33:11):
But see there's a conflation in there, the thoughts, the daydreaming,
which I think is a beautiful thing. I'm not anti thought.
I think daydreaming can be amazing. It's where a lot
of creativity comes from. So, don't get me wrong. But
what you're dropping in there are deliberate attempts to get
in touch with your senses, the sights, the sounds, the smells.

(33:33):
That is mindfulness, that is dropping below the level of discursive,
often repetitive and negative thought and getting in touch with
the raw data of your senses. To me, that is
definitionally mindfulness. And so and I take a lot less
militaristic view of meditation, where you know you're sitting in
some special position, and some zen monk is smacking with

(33:57):
you with a stick of metime you falls like that,
That's not how I roll. And so just dipping below
the level of thinking is a kind of meditation. And
your walks through the park or your daily walks through
the museums in New York City like that has meditation elements.
You're just doing what works for you, and that is perfect.

(34:18):
What works for you is always perfect, okay.

Speaker 1 (34:21):
All right, And both of those have the feature that
I think we're trying to achieve with meditation, right, which
is that we are kind of both non judgmentally noticing
our thoughts and in an ideal world kind of practicing
to control them, like practicing to kind of move them
in a direction that feels a little bit healthier and
like functionally, that's very consistent with a lot of therapeutic

(34:44):
practices too, where you're kind of non judgmentally noticing your thoughts,
maybe trying to move your thoughts in another direct and
enjoy I see you nodding. This is kind of the
type of thing you do in your practice. A bunch of.

Speaker 4 (34:54):
Yeah, yeah, And I think you know, really, so much
of it is about being present, right, And I love
that you had this beautiful I think disagreement in some
ways around like what is meditation and withs and that,
because I think that that is a part of what
has made mindfulness and meditation feel very in it accessible
for a lot of people.

Speaker 1 (35:10):
This idea that it can only look one way when we.

Speaker 4 (35:13):
Are having a conversation, that lets us know that it
can look lots of different ways, right, and so getting
in touch with our senses doing a five minute breathing exercise,
I can can look a lot of different ways. And
so it really is a trial and error of finding
the thing that works for you so that you can
access it when you feel like.

Speaker 7 (35:28):
You need it. Doctor Joy for the when.

Speaker 1 (35:33):
Hey, Elmo, can you help us out with an ad break?

Speaker 2 (35:35):
Of course, Doctor Louie, but tell me a lot of
break now, but don't go anywhere. That tell me is
a hopless we'll be back soon.

Speaker 1 (35:53):
I sometimes ask myself a very simple question, when were
you last living in the moment depressingly? My answer is
often I can't remember. I'm usually so busy ruminating about
the past or worrying about the future that I forget
to enjoy the here and now, which isn't so great
for my well being, But what can I do better?
I decided to ask the Titans of Happiness. Gretchen Rubin

(36:15):
jumped in first.

Speaker 5 (36:16):
I'm the kind of person that's constantly up in her
head and I'm walking on the beach and I don't
see or hear or smell anything because I'm just rewriting
a paragraph in my head. So I have to make
a very very deliberate effort to connect with my five senses.
But I think this is something that we don't all
have the same five senses, but this is something that's
available to us at all times, and just stopping and

(36:38):
saying like Wow, that's a beautiful smell, or that's an
unusual smeller, Like oh wow, I'm in a hardware store.

Speaker 3 (36:44):
Hardware stores have that hardware store smell.

Speaker 5 (36:46):
Or I'm going to reach out and actually touch the
bark of that tree or put my hand on that
moss that looks so springy.

Speaker 3 (36:52):
Does it feel springy and damp? Is it actually dry?
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (36:56):
I'm going to touch it and feel it. There's something
about connecting with our bodies that is so energizing and
so revitalizing, and it's available to us at all times.
For me, that is a really valuable way just to
connect with them moment through our bodies, because you know,
the thing with these with these experiences is we can't
bookmark them, we can't save them for later, we can't
even really binge them. Like I'm a person who loves

(37:17):
the sense of smell. But one of the things about
the sense of smell is even if I want to
keep smelling that lilac bush, after a few seconds, I'm
I'm gonna have other fatigue and I'm not gonna be
able to smell it. So I have to enjoy it
now and then let it go. And different people are
more attuned to seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching. So whatever
that is for you, thinking about like how you could
really bring that into your life, or if there's something

(37:38):
that you neglect, is there a way that you can
bring that in, because that's probably where you have more
low hanging fruit. I even have a quiz on my site,
gretchenmuben dot com slash quiz where you can take a
quiz to find out what's your most neglected sense and
what's your most appreciated sense Because a lot of times
we don't even know we don't even think about it.
But it's something that's available to us us at all times,
and it ties us to that present moment, and it

(38:00):
just it just refreshes us, even if they're bad.

Speaker 3 (38:02):
That's the thing that's funny. Even I like even bad smells.

Speaker 1 (38:05):
I love this point so much because the last time
we talked about senses, you had me kind of getting
a little bit obsessed with thinking about different colors of
different things. Oh yeah, and in fact, I wanted to
see if we could have Elmo play a game where
he notices some colors.

Speaker 2 (38:18):
Sure, everyone loves games.

Speaker 1 (38:21):
Okay, here it goes.

Speaker 5 (38:22):
Okay, So, Elma, what are some blue things you saw
this week? What were some of your favorite blue things?

Speaker 2 (38:27):
Blue things? Let's see, Well, Cookie Master has blue fur.
Almos him, Graver Glover has blue fur. Yes, I saw
him and or Emma ate some blueberries for a snack.
There's a blue and oh, Emma saw a really pretty
blue sky on sesame streets.

Speaker 5 (38:45):
We'll just taking the time to notice those things makes
you feel more connected.

Speaker 3 (38:48):
To the world and the people around you and the
monsters around you too.

Speaker 2 (38:52):
Well, that's telling Emma all about.

Speaker 1 (38:55):
It, Gretcha, Thank you, Elmo, you're so good at noticing
blue things.

Speaker 9 (38:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:59):
Here, as we think about how we can use our senses,
I feel like it's really powerful to be in your
senses because it's yet another way to get away from
your phones. But I know this is one that, like
I struggle with so any other great strategies for kind
of stepping away from your technology.

Speaker 3 (39:14):
I have a quick hack.

Speaker 5 (39:15):
Please, okay, if you are using your smartphone too much,
go into your settings and change it to grayscale, which
means that instead of being in full color, your phone
will be in black, white, and gray. And it does
two things. It makes it much harder to use. Just
from a utilitarian it's just much harder to navigate. That's
one of the reasons we see colors, because it helps us,
you know, navigate the world. And it's also much less
enticing because you know, if you're looking like on ads

(39:38):
or even like photos of people you love, they're just
they don't grab your attention in the same way. And
so it's so much easier to step away from that
phone because it's less appealing, and it's also tougher to use.
And this takes one second, and you can change it
back anytime you want if you like, get pictures of
your baby niece, you can switch it back so you
could see in full color and then turn it back
to a gray scale. But so many people say that

(39:59):
this is kind of up there with like not having
your phone next to you when you go to sleep
at night, you know, in terms of making it easier
to step away from the phone.

Speaker 7 (40:07):
I'll add one.

Speaker 6 (40:08):
This is and Catherine Price, who wrote an excellent book
called How to Break Up with Your Phone, and she
asks people to just ask themselves a question on the
regular when you feel your zombie arm moving out of
your control to grab the phone, if you can remember,
and it's going to be hard to remember, so if
you can just remember, say ten percent of the time,

(40:28):
to ask what do I need right now?

Speaker 7 (40:32):
Why am I doing this?

Speaker 6 (40:33):
And maybe you'll tune into the fact that you're bored
or lonely or hungry or tired or whatever it is.
And if you can catch that insert a little pause,
you might then be able to make a better decision
about how to use your time.

Speaker 1 (40:48):
I love this one. One of Catherine's other questions that
I like a lot is what else, like what else
could I be doing right now? Which is for me,
has been this lovely way to kind of notice the
opportunity cost of being on my phone right now, Like, oh,
I'm not talking to my husband at dinner, I'm not
paying attention to what I'm eating. I'm not like looking
out the world and noticing like all the cool things
I could notice. That one's been super profound for me.

Speaker 3 (41:09):
I've heard of people who will put their e reading app.

Speaker 5 (41:12):
They'll like, if there's whatever their social platform is that
they use the most, they'll replace it with their e
reader and move the social platform deep into their phone.
So when they have the zombie finger going out and
hitting that app, the novel pops up, and you're like,
you know what I'd really rather have.

Speaker 3 (41:29):
It's the opportunity cost.

Speaker 5 (41:30):
I would really rather spend this time reading that novel
than scrolling through social media. And if I want to
get to the social media, I'm gonna have to work
harder to get there. And so maybe that's going to
give me that pause to say, what else could.

Speaker 1 (41:41):
I be doing? Joanna, you mentioned kind of getting off
your phone before. I'm curious that you had particular strategies
that fit into.

Speaker 4 (41:47):
Yeah, So I just want to call attention to how
lively this conversation is and how many hecks we're having
to develop to like break up with our phone and
like break up with technology. And so I think that
that is an important reminder for us that these platforms
really are designed to keep us there, right, And so
when you're struggling in that way, know that you are

(42:08):
not alone because they are made that way by design.
So yeah, So in addition to you know, all the
incredible hecks that other people have shared, I've also heard
of people kind of moving away from smartphones altogether. And
so maybe they still have like a smartphone for like
business hours, but in the rest of their day they
use a phone that is just like for emergencies, right,

(42:29):
And so really being able to kind of like put
that phone away but still be reachable, I think can
be another strategy if you find everything else just very
very difficult.

Speaker 6 (42:36):
First, I totally agree with Joy. I mean this kind
of goes back to self compassion. If you're beating yourself
up for being addicted to your phone, recognizing that this
is you against some of the most brilliant designers and
most powerful supercomputers on earth.

Speaker 3 (42:52):
Who've been evolving this for decades now.

Speaker 6 (42:54):
Yes, the odds are stacked against you. It would just
put in another plug for meditation in this regard, which
is you know, mindfulness meditation you know, which is very
closely linked to what a Gretchen was talking about before
in terms of being in touch with your senses, can
help you develop more self awareness so that you might notice, Oh,

(43:15):
I'm on hour eight of scrolling through Twitter, and I'm
starting to reply to people in all caps, So maybe
I should put this phone down. The self awareness and interception,
the body awareness that we can develop through mindfulness meditation
can be a kind of Doppler radar. It can point
out when a storm is coming, so that you're better

(43:37):
equipped to do this very tough battle with the supercomputers.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
So that was the problem of kind of finding ways
to be more present navigating the technology that's sort of
pulling us away from being present most of the time.
But I also think that to deal with the kind
of mental health crisis that so many of us are
facing right now, we need better strategies for being present
even when the present moment isn't awesome. Right, we were
just talking about moments of being present when you're missing
out on the good things, and these beautiful colors of

(44:03):
blue that you can see and all the great sensory
information around you. But I think we also need to
find ways to be present when the present moment is
kind of not feeling so awesome what it's maybe feeling
sort of yucky. So I'm curious your go to strategies
for navigating negative emotions and maybe even finding ways to
be present with them, Doctor Joy, any good strategies for that.

Speaker 4 (44:25):
Yeah, I have really found that showers and baths help
with that because I do think it is another opportunity
to ground right and you are sensing, like Gretchen talked about,
like the water around you, and I think especially for showers,
there is a way that you can kind of visualize
all of the negativity, all of the things that you're
worrying about, just kind of going down the drain as
you are standing there in the shower. And so again

(44:46):
I think that that is something that feels very tangible,
again for people who struggle with like what does this mean?
And it feels very abstract, I think showers can be
a really great way to manage some of those more
difficult emotions.

Speaker 5 (44:57):
Absolutely, Yeah, I love this washing away because really it
really does work. But one of the and I don't
want to say this in a way that it's like
every glass is half full and nothing is negative. You know,
you just have to think your way to a positive side.
I'm not saying that, but I will say that one
of the things I work on is to see like
negative emotions have value and they're important flashing signs that

(45:20):
something needs to change or something's out of whack or
out of value. And so when I'm feeling those emotions
like I'm feeling envy, or I'm feeling regret, or I'm
feeling boredom or anger or righteous indignation or just irritation,
you know, I'm really I really try to step back
and think like, Okay, well, what's what's the information here?
Because for me, I often am just trying to sort

(45:41):
of power through emotions and kind of move on to
the next thing. And so for me, it really is like, Okay, well,
I'm having this feeling of envy. What does this person
have that I envy? Or out of nowhere, I seem
to be overwhelmed with rage, why might DAD be Instead
of just ignoring it or trying to be like dismissing it,
saying like well, something set me off. There's information there,

(46:05):
but as you say, it's very unpleasant. Like negative emotions
are no fun, and to be overwhelmed with feelings of
resentment or righteous indignation can be very very painful, but
there is value in them. So I just try to
stay with it, let myself experience it, because I'm a
person who tends to try to just barrel through.

Speaker 1 (46:25):
Yeah, And I think, you know, one of the reasons
I like using these emotions is information. I sometimes the
analogy I use with my students is it's like the
dashboard on your car, like the emergency dashboard, Like it's
your engine light, your tire.

Speaker 3 (46:36):
Like yes, what a good that a floor?

Speaker 1 (46:39):
And I like that one because it's because, like I
don't know about you, maybe you all deal with your
cars very differently than I do. But like the engine
light will go on and I'll be like, gotta deal
with that at some point, not right now. I'm not
gonna pull over and like drive to you know, like
the car mechanic, but like I got to schedule sometime
on Tuesday to like go back to this and notice
it and figure it out. And so I think sometimes
when our negative emotions are there, there's like a time

(47:02):
for kind of you know, putting them briefly to this
side so that we can kind of but but you
also have to schedule time to come back to them.
I also think there's strategies we can use when we're
in the thick of negative emotions to kind of allow
them and sort of radically accept them. And Dan, I
know this is some of the practices that you've talked
about in the work that you've done with meditation, of

(47:22):
like just things we can do to kind of be
there with our emotions and sort of allow them. Any
good strategies to share.

Speaker 6 (47:28):
With that, Yeah, well, I mean, as you know, I
come out of a Buddhist context, so what I'm about
to say might sound deeply counterintuitive or deeply unpleasant.

Speaker 7 (47:35):
Or radical in some way.

Speaker 6 (47:37):
So I'd be curious once I talk about it to
see how it goes down with you. You know, everything
in our culture strongly suggests to us that when we
feel discomfort, we should self medicate in some way, shop,
distract ourselves, drink, gamble, But actually that makes it worse

(48:01):
and the move the real jiu jitsu move. In many situations,
this is not always true. So for example, in trauma situations,
I think you want to be a little bit more
careful than what I'm about to describe. And maybe Joy
can step in and give some more subtle instructions. But
for let's just say the worried. Well, for most of us,

(48:24):
you can dive into whatever you're feeling, not in a
wallowing way, but in a curious way. So I'll give
you a little slogan that I got from my meditation teacher,
Joseph Goldstein, which is, it's okay. This does not mean
everything's okay. It means it's okay to feel whatever I'm

(48:44):
feeling right now. And in that process of okay, yeah,
this is anger, let's see if we can use the
microscope of our mind to disambiguate what's actually happening here.
Is there buzzing in my chest or my ears turning red?
Is there a starburst of self righteous thoughts? Picking apart

(49:06):
what seems like a monolithic force of anger and seeing
that actually it has constituent parts. It comes and goes
as constantly in flux can help you move from being
totally identified with your anger to recognizing that it's a
passing storm, and once you allow it to come and go.

(49:27):
Then you can respond wisely to the situation on the
other side rather than reacting blindly.

Speaker 7 (49:34):
And to me, this is an incredibly powerful move.

Speaker 6 (49:38):
Of course, in some cases you really do want to
be careful and specifically, I'm thinking about trauma, so I'll
shout up and see if any of that lands for
any of.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
You, Doctor Joyan. Does this kind of fit with some
of the work that you do in clinical practice thinking
about wise mind and some of those ideas, Absolutely, yeah.

Speaker 4 (49:54):
I think we often use the metaphor of like watching
waves kind of go up and down and crashing, and
like emotions are similar to that, right like you can
see it rise to its peak with it eventually it
does phase out. And so I do appreciate that caveat,
and because especially with traumatic experiences, you do want to
be careful not to dive right into the middle of

(50:15):
that without having some support, because you can't be flooded
and can make you feel more distressed than I think
you would if you had some support. But to your point,
like you know, the normal kind of everyday worries and concerns,
being able to sit with your emotions as opposed to
run away from it can actually be a very helpful activity.

Speaker 1 (50:32):
You know, if we look around the world at mental
health reports, you know, one of the big things that's
on the rise in terms of negative emotions is people's anxiety, right,
And I think in some ways it's worth saying that
that's formative. Right, there's lots of stuff in the world
right now to be anxious about. But also anxiety doesn't
really feel awesome, and sometimes in some cases it seems
to be applied in cases where it's just fre floating

(50:53):
or maybe not appropriate for the situation. Joy you're nodding,
So I'm curious if you have some good strategies for
this one.

Speaker 4 (50:59):
Yeah, I think it's just important to really normalize like
how much anxiety everybody is.

Speaker 7 (51:04):
Feeling at the time.

Speaker 4 (51:06):
And you know, I honestly think we a part of
what has been missed maybe in this conversation is thinking
about the time in the history at which we find
ourselves kind of post pandemic, if that is a thing,
because I don't think that there has ever been like
a slowing down and a stopping really to say, oh
my gosh, what was this thing we all experienced together, right,

(51:27):
Like we kind of just ran back into our offices
and kind of like, you know, trying to assume life
as normal when we are not who we were anymore.
And so I think that that has led a lot
of people to feeling very anxious on top of the
anxiety they may have been feeling even before the pandemic happened,
right And so I think it is important to kind
of just give credence and give space to the idea

(51:47):
that many of us are feeling very anxious about lots
of different things right now, and that it is okay to.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
Kind of feel that anxiety that you might be experiencing.

Speaker 6 (51:56):
Just to pick up on what Joy was saying about
the pandemic, you know, I don't think it takes a
rocket science to figure out that one of the reasons
why the pandemic dramatically boosted our anxiety is that we
were or cut off from one another. It goes back
to our discussion before about social connection and never worrying alone.

(52:17):
For me, the maintenance and cultivation of relationships is what
as a very anxious person, so who not only suffers
from anxiety but also panic attacks, never worrying alone, cultivating
and maintaining personal relationships is a huge, huge element for me.
I would say there are two other things. I think

(52:38):
one other source of anxiety for people is a sense
of helplessness, especially when you look at the news and
you look at what's happening in politics and climate and
armed conflict. And there's an expression that I really love,
which is action absorbs anxiety. Take action locally. You can
volunteer locally. It doesn't even have to be relevant to

(53:00):
the thing you're worried about. So if you're worried about
the presidential election, you don't even have to volunteer on
a campaign. You can volunteer at an animal shelter just
doing so, just being helpful to your friends and family.
I mean, think about the moment when you hold the
door open for somebody, what does that feel like?

Speaker 7 (53:17):
It feels good? And we keep talking about do good
feel good?

Speaker 6 (53:20):
That feeling is infinitely scalable, and I believe is an
anti anxiety medication that is free and non addictive. And
then the final thing I'll say about anxiety, and for
me in particular, with somebody who really deals with a
lot of not only garden variety anxiety but still panic attacks,
is systematically getting yourself more comfortable with discomfort. I think

(53:45):
one of the contributing factors to the modern uptick in
anxiety is a pandemic to be a little cute of
aversion to discomfort. We've created a world where everything is
so easy, information, dates, food, it's all a swipe away,
and so there's so much less friction in our lives,
and that is contributing to a general unwillingness to tolerate discomfort.

(54:09):
And so for me, for example, with claustrophobia, and I
have some trouble with elevators, as Gretchen knows, she and
I were at having dinner at a friend's apartment recently
and I had to walk the stairs. But I've gotten
very consistent at Okay, I know I'm afraid of elevators.
I have claustrophobia. I take every opportunity I can to
ride them when I'm feeling well enough to do so,

(54:29):
or if I've got somebody I trust. And so this
is called exposure therapy. And you can knit this into
your life with whatever scares you, making little, carefully calibrated
experiments to inoculate yourself against stress.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
Yeah, I love this idea. Who was recently talking with
a clinician at Yale about you know, what can we
do to kind of promote mental health and young people.
And one of the things she said was, I wish
we could get all the young people today to engage
in a little bit more distressed tolerance. Right, well intentioned
parents who are trying to do great things of like
help kids with their homework and help them kind of
make things really easy in life and so on, it's

(55:05):
meant that like they've just gotten out of practice when
it comes to dealing with form of distress, even simple
things like boredom. Right, we just kind of stick a
screen in front of a kid who's feeling bored. And
so I think kind of developing a personal practice where
you engage a little bit more with those tiny negative emotions, right,
like not taking on like some terrible traumatic situation, but
just tiny negative moments that you can sort of endure.

(55:26):
It sort of gives you practice so that when the
big things come up, you feel like, Okay, I've readied
my muscles. I've kind of like gone to the sort
of distress tolerance gym a little bit. Just makes it
easier later on when the big things come up.

Speaker 6 (55:38):
Funny little story, Laurie that my son who's nine came
to me recently said he was bored, and I said, well,
how does that feel in your body?

Speaker 7 (55:44):
And he said is.

Speaker 3 (55:44):
This a meditation thing?

Speaker 6 (55:46):
Because if it is, I don't want to hear it.

Speaker 3 (55:51):
Well.

Speaker 5 (55:52):
One strategy that I find very helpful, and this is
for more kind of low level anxiety, not the kind
of serious anxiety Dan was just talking about, but maybe
more kind of like the jumpiness, the jitteriness, the kind
of uneasy feeling that sometimes can creep up on us.
Is I find that just like physical exercise. Maybe it
is the hula hoop, Maybe it's you know, walking up
and down the stairs. Maybe it's going for and if

(56:14):
I go for a walk outside and and then the sunshine,
that's even better. If I'm walking outside in the sunshine
talking to my neighbor and picking up trash, that's even better.
But there's something about just like getting in the body
and like using a little bit of energy that's helpful.
And then also if we're exercising, it's easier to sleep
at night. Then with more restless sleep, then we feel
more energized the next day. A lot of times these
things build on each other. You know, you don't sleep well,

(56:36):
so then you feel that makes you feel more anxious too,
just more and more in finding that exercises often the
elixir for a lot of things. It makes a lot
of things better, and it's just good for us in
so many ways for mood.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
Immune function, memory focus.

Speaker 5 (56:51):
At least, I find in my own life that if
I have that kind of jumpy anxiety where it's kind
of racing running through my body and making it hard
for me to sort of like feel calm, I find
that I get a lot more calm when I go
for a walk.

Speaker 1 (57:04):
And it's also just a way, you know, to kind
of hack your sympathetic nervous system a little bit right,
and like this idea of a little hermetic stress right
where you're just kind of like getting your heart rate
racing and kind of giving your body a little bit
of a different kind of stress so that it learns,
Oh wait, I can calm down.

Speaker 3 (57:19):
I don't do the racing heartbeat, got to confess, I'm
doing more like the walk, the stroll. I'm doing the walk,
the walking a dog, you know.

Speaker 5 (57:27):
But yes, but again, as coming back to what we
were saying before, there are many ways to do this right.
There's no one right way. It's whatever works for you.
For some people, it might be going for a run,
going for a bike ride. Another person it might be
you know, ambling through a garden and the you know,
in their neighborhood or something.

Speaker 3 (57:42):
So but whatever works, it's worth thinking about.

Speaker 1 (57:45):
So as we end this kind of conversation on World
Mental Health Day, I'm just curious if you have any
final advice for somebody feeling a little hopeless, like I
really want to improve my mental health. What's your kind
of one go to tip that you would kind of
want to end with to help somebody improve their mental
health on a day like today, Dretchen, do you want
to start?

Speaker 5 (58:03):
I would say, take a walk outside in the sunshine,
pet a dog, pick up some trash, talk to a neighbor.
That's one thing that just about everybody can do pretty easily,
even if they don't have a lot of time, energy,
or money.

Speaker 7 (58:19):
Dan, this is less a hack and more of a
piece of good news.

Speaker 6 (58:26):
I spent thirty years as a news anchor, and now
my job is basically to spread one piece of news,
which is extremely good news, which is that the science
is showing us that happiness is not an unalterable factory setting.
It's a skill that you can practice in many many ways,
from meditation to getting out in nature, getting more sleep, exercise,

(58:47):
social fitness as it's sometimes called, you know, boosting your
ability to connect with other people. You don't have to
boil the ocean and do them all at once, Just
pick one or two that seem most attractive to you
and start there. But again, the good news is you're
the states of mind that you want are not, as
I said before, unalterable factories setting their skills.

Speaker 1 (59:12):
Doctor Joy, either some good news about mental health or
a final suggestion.

Speaker 4 (59:16):
Yeah, I think I will borrow from the late great
mister Rogers who talked about always looking for the helpers,
because I think when you are feeling hopeless, it is
very easy to forget that there are so many people
just all around you doing great things, and so looking
at who's holding the door open for somebody, or who
paid for somebody's coffee behind you, So looking for the

(59:38):
helpers and also becoming a helper yourself. Like we've talked
about in this conversation, doing good for others really can't
go very far.

Speaker 1 (59:46):
Well. I want to end with a little bit of gratitude,
which might be my tip, right, A kind of quick
sense that things are good in life and there are
some blessings out there. And I'm very grateful for the
fact that all my titans of happiness showed up today.
Thank you so much, Elmo and doctor Joy and Gretchen
and Dan. This has been super fun.

Speaker 7 (01:00:03):
Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:00:04):
It was incredible.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
Dot As Sills, come on, let's a totin of happiness.

Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
Oh, Elmo, You'll always be my tight en of happiness.

Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
That's very kind. Doctor Lourie, Hello everybody, thanks for listening.
Elma loves you.

Speaker 5 (01:00:23):
H