Our guest today hopes to inspire us to reach for more joy in our lives. Denise talks with Dr. Pat Romney, an 80-year-old psychologist and writer who decided years ago that she was going to live a joyful life and so set out to build it. She shares thoughts, ideas and tips on how to build joy into our lives - not just when times are good, but every day.
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Hosted by Denise Schwartz
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Backyard Oasis, a podcast designed by and for older adults living in the beautiful
(00:09):
Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts and produced in the tech studios at Greenfield
Community College in Greenfield, Massachusetts.
Backyard Oasis reaches out to older adults who seek knowledge to help them live more
thoughtfully, healthfully, and happily, who hope to inspire others with their ideas and
(00:31):
who serve their communities in the interest of their greater good.
Hello I'm Denise Schwartz, your host.
It's November leading into December.
Now for many, that's a time of planning for holidays.
To bring us feelings of joy and also sadness.
(00:55):
It's not easy to think about feeling joyful sometimes, you know, sometimes when you assess
the state of the world or the state of your own self that is growing older.
It takes some time to wake up joy.
Our guest today hopes to inspire us to reach for more joy in our lives.
She's Dr. Pat Romney.
(01:15):
She's an 80-year-old writer, psychologist, and leadership coach.
She leads workshops on aging with joy.
And she is dedicated to bringing more joy into the lives of all humans, especially those
who are older adults.
She says she has always loved older people.
And she also said, lo and behold, she's become one.
(01:38):
Haven't we all?
So hi, Pat.
Hi, Denise.
You know, I'm really glad you're here.
It's a time when I think we really need to learn to understand what joy can do for us
and how we can grab onto it when not everything is so good.
So I hope that's where we're going to go today.
But so I've been reading a little bit more about joy.
And I've noticed that many folks who've studied and written about it have noted that joy and
(02:03):
sorrow are deeply connected.
You know, both are related to what matters most to us.
That kept coming up in what I was reading.
What matters most to you is what brings you joy.
Now I remember in high school when I first read Kylo Gibran's poem called On Joy and
Sorrow.
And I know you've told me you've read that too.
(02:24):
That poem meant so much to me back then that I taped it to my bedroom wall.
And I have it taped to my office wall today.
There are two lines in the poem that struck me, and they still do.
And if you don't mind, I'm just going to read those two because I really love this and I
like to think about what it means.
So these are the two lines.
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has
(02:50):
given you sorrow that is now giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful, look again into your heart and you shall see that in truth you
are weeping for that which has been your delight.
In a pat, I love that word delight.
And I think we can connect that to joy in a lot of ways.
(03:11):
So let's talk about joy rather than sorrow even though one often leads to the other.
Okay?
That sounds good.
Okay.
So you say you started to think about joy back in the 1990s.
What caused you to do that?
Well I was beginning to meditate and I came upon the work of Echneth Eoswaran who's written
(03:32):
a book called God Makes the Rivers to Flow.
And his approach to meditation is to memorize prayers and poems and to recite those to yourself.
And so I found this poem by St. Augustine called Entering into Joy.
And the poem begins, Imagine if all the tumult of the body were to quiet down, along with
(03:57):
all our busy thoughts of earth, sea, and air, if the very world should stop and the mind
cease thinking about itself, go beyond itself and be quite still.
And he goes on, St. Augustine being the Catholic leader of the church, and it ends with, Would
this not be what is written in Scripture?
(04:20):
Enter ye into the joy of our Lord.
Well I'm a lapsed Catholic.
I went all the way through Catholic college.
So this really spoke to me because here I was in my late 50s with three children, two
aging parents, more jobs than I want to talk about right now.
And I needed to take that deep breath and to imagine that there was a place of joy in
(04:47):
the silence and in the peace that I've read about in this poem.
Did you find it?
Little by little.
Some years later I read the Book of Joy by Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama, and there
I found it again.
(05:08):
And after reading that book, I began to do some work with some colleagues of mine on
joy and presenting joy.
So I absolutely have found joy, particularly at 80.
It's the most joyous time of my life.
So I want to hear how you allow others to find joy.
And I also would like to know what your daily routine is like and how you find joy every
(05:33):
day.
Can we do those two things?
Sure.
So how I help others to find joy, the most important component I think is connection.
Yes, that's what.
So you know, making, I mean several groups with peoples, some of which I've started.
One of us, one of them is our cul-de-sac book club, which I've told you about.
(05:54):
We meet roughly about once a month.
And I said to our neighbors who, three other couples, we're all in the senior years.
We've known each other for years, but not well.
But now most of us are retired.
We're home all the time.
So we meet once a month.
And I said, why don't we read memoirs?
And someone else in the circle said, great idea.
(06:17):
Why don't we make it a dinner?
So one person brings the appetizer, one family brings the appetizer, one family brings the
salad, one family brings the dinner, one family brings the dessert.
And we read memoirs.
We've gotten to know each other so well, to connect, to help each other out when one
couple is away or somebody has to, has had a knee surgery, they drove my husband to his
(06:39):
physical therapy, our neighbors did.
So we began to help each other and we connected in that way.
I also have another group that's called the Positivity Pod.
And that is a group of five of us.
I'm the oldest and our youngest is in her early 50s.
We also meet weekly and we focus on positivity and joy.
(07:01):
And we've offered workshops together on that topic.
What do you mean you focus on it?
We, following the work of, I'm going to blank on his name right now.
That's okay, we'll come back.
But we follow this work called positive intelligence.
And we always start with a meditation.
(07:23):
Then we do a check-in.
And then we have a topic that one of us will decide upon, whoever is leading that morning.
So we meet for 45 minutes every Wednesday morning before work and we are together.
And we share our crises.
We share our joys.
(07:43):
We share how to center ourselves and to move forward in the world.
And we always remember that we're together.
So I'm thinking that togetherness is sort of what we've been talking about in the last
episode that we did.
We were talking about neighborhoods and being neighbors.
And we're really talking about the same thing, this connected thing.
(08:06):
And it does work.
But you've set it up so that in several of your groups you work on, you get together
on a regular basis.
Now that seems to be something that you can only do when you have a lot of time.
So this could be the time when you're going to find joy because you have time to connect
and do that.
But how do you take the topics that everyone brings to say the group that you just talked
(08:27):
about that bring you to joy?
Are the topics, what are they?
Oh, anything and everything.
But how does any kind of topic bring you to joy?
I think joy comes from the connection with one another and the support that we have for
(08:48):
each other.
And I would quibble a little bit with your, I mean, certainly we have more time.
I still work.
And my work brings me great joy.
So I don't have lots of time.
But I think back to when I was 17 in my first job for Metropolitan Life Insurance Company,
every Friday afternoon, a group of us would go out bowling.
(09:10):
They would go drinking.
I didn't drink at that time.
So they'd go for a drink and then, or else they'd drink at the bowling alley.
And it was every week.
There's something about the routine, the expectation.
My husband and I on Friday nights now, this started during COVID, we go out to dinner every
single Friday night.
So in a week of stress, of pressure, of work to be done and family to be taken care of,
(09:37):
we can always look forward to Friday when we take a deep breath and we just spend time
together.
So I think something about routine helps us define joy.
Structure.
Yeah.
So if I was a person who came to you and said, oh, Pat, help me find some joy in my life,
how would we start?
(09:57):
Well, I'd want to know what you love, what you care about, what matters to you.
I'd want to know about your family.
I'd want to know certainly about your connections, who you're connecting with, how often, whether
those connections bring you joy, whether they're positive and uplifting.
That's how we'd start.
(10:18):
And you said that there are some activities that people come to you to find joy that they
can be involved in.
There were activities and attitudes.
Well, attitude, you read a lot about this in the Book of Joy.
There are particular attitudes like perspective.
I was writing about this yesterday in my blog.
(10:40):
Having some, one of my family members is going through a lot of difficult moments.
And I thought, wow, with them, supporting them a little bit like, oh, I'm too old for
this, too many problems.
And then I thought, wait a minute, I have perspective.
After living 80 years, I know that we go through tough times and we can come out of tough times.
(11:07):
And I can bring that.
I can offer that to my family members, that in my support.
So how I look at things, my husband was saying to me the other day, it all depends on what
you choose to focus on.
Are you going to focus on the troubles and let yourself be buried in them and just stew
in what's wrong?
(11:28):
Or are you going to say, boy, I have gratitude even for my troubles because I'm still alive.
I'm still able to move.
I'm still able to think.
But do you find yourself and do your students or do you call them students?
People come to you to help find joy.
Do you find that sometimes you have to force yourself to have that attitude?
(11:53):
I mean, it can't always come easy.
But I don't think force isn't the word that I would use.
What word would you use?
I would say, invite myself.
I want to invite myself to look at this situation differently.
I want to invite myself to think about the possibility that emerges from a problem.
(12:14):
And you and I were talking earlier about hope.
I want to invite myself to find where's the hope in this?
Where's the lesson?
What can I be grateful for?
That's the other attitude that I find.
The two attitudes I want to access most often are gratitude and humility.
(12:35):
Gratitude for being alive.
Gratitude for being reasonably well.
Gratitude for having a home and a bed to sleep in.
Absolutely.
But there are times when things aren't great in your life.
And it seems so hard to have that kind of attitude.
I'm not saying you're feeling depressed or anything.
(12:56):
Well, maybe you are.
So how do you grab that and make it be authentic?
I have done it through my reading, through my regular practices, through my connections
with others.
I know there are always people there to support me.
Right.
I know I can't, and I can see the other side of.
So it's cultivating positive practices.
(13:19):
I guess knowing that other people do that, okay, other people take a time in their life
that might not be so great and say, no, wait a minute, I'm going to look at where I can
find the best part of this or what I can grow from.
Knowing that lots of people do that kind of gives you a sense that it is authentic enough,
that it's not artificial.
(13:40):
And I know that other people are feeling the same way I do, you know, that's the connection
thing.
You really do feel better about your problems or whatever you're facing.
It's that old misery loves company thing, but I hate to say it that way because it sounds
so sad.
But that really, I think, does help when you find out, oh yeah, you're feeling the same
way I am, okay, this is what you did when that happened to you.
Now I feel the same way.
I feel a little better.
(14:01):
It's finding someone who's kind of like you in a way.
I 100% agree with that.
And the misery loves company, I don't know so much.
We may come together in our misery for certain.
But if we stay in our misery, we're not helped.
And if we're around somebody who's miserable all the time, we want to turn the corner and
(14:21):
find somebody else to be with.
So if we can come together in our misery and uplift each other.
Well you know what I find happens, if I say I have a lot of girlfriends, and you know,
my husband and I, we talk to, I have a lot of friends.
And if we start talking about the thing that's bothering us right now, the thing, you know,
maybe we don't feel well.
And that person says, you know, we do the organ recital, oh my liver hurts, oh my head hurts,
(14:44):
oh my blah blah, and we start doing that.
And then I find, you know what happens, I started laughing when you were talking about
it.
I find that we get to the point where we just look at each other and just start to kind
of laugh because in a way, it's kind of funny.
We're all facing this stuff.
And especially for older adults, I know people say, oh no, are we just going to talk about
(15:04):
our medical stuff?
Well let's face it, it is a really big part of aging.
And so when you talk with older adults in particular, how do you talk to them about the medical
stuff that can be so bad and be so serious and still encourage them to find joy in their
lives?
(15:25):
So I'm thinking about three different scenarios.
If I'm talking with a therapy client of mine, I'm going to listen as long as they need to
talk about whatever the physical problems or emotional problems they have and what they're
going through.
And I'm going to be as empathic as I possibly can.
(15:49):
And at some point, I'm going to invite them to wonder, is anything good happening?
Is anything positive happening right now?
Is there hope for this treatment?
Is there anything that you can hold on to that gives you a moment of joy or relief or
(16:10):
again of hope?
And do you find that people always are able to find that moment of peace or hope?
Or are they not?
I think many people, most people are.
Even if it's who's holding you through that.
Right, who's holding your hand, who's standing by your bedside.
The nurse who comes to clean.
(16:32):
You know, I worked for many years in a nursing home and I switched my practice to working
with elders.
And the people that elders in nursing homes love the most are the AIDS.
Why is that?
Because they clean them.
In the most intimate ways, they're touching them.
They're being with them.
They're caring for them.
(16:53):
So even that is a moment of pleasure.
Another scenario I think about though is when I go out, you know, I told you my husband
and I go out every Friday night and sometimes we go with another couple.
Or you know, couple of couples.
And I noticed that my elder friends will often start with the scenario, the organ recital.
I interrupt that.
(17:15):
Not say don't do that.
But I will start talking about positive things.
Because I feel that in that scenario, we're out to dinner.
We're to have a good time.
So what are we going to talk about?
We're going to talk about the wonderful movie we saw or the play that we went to or the
grandchildren were growing so beautifully.
(17:35):
So in that scenario, I will try to help make that organ recital a shorter recital.
That's a really good idea.
I wanted to look at, I wanted to see if you could address something that I found here.
Let me see.
I'm not sure I have my glasses.
I'm not sure I can read them.
I wonder if you could do this.
I thought these three things that tell us about ways that we can build joy into our
(17:59):
lives kind of made sense.
We've talked about one of them.
One is grow in authenticity and live more into one's strengths.
So we're going to talk about that.
Grow in depth of relationships and contributing to others.
We've spent a lot of time talking about this.
When number three, I really want to think about this.
(18:21):
Live more aligned with one's ethical and spiritual ideals.
I love it.
I do too.
I think of principally the work of Martin Seligman, who's the father of positive psychology.
For anyone who's interested, go to via.org, virtuesandaction.org, and it's also via.com.
(18:43):
You can take an assessment that will help you see what are your major strengths and virtues.
Oh, I love that.
So mine is zest.
That's my top.
I don't know.
Having just met you, I have talked a little bit about you.
I don't know.
Zest.
You did say you were a party girl.
(19:03):
Yes.
So just knowing what your virtues are.
So I think that's one place.
And I also want to mention the COPS assessment, C-O-P-P-E-S, which is an assessment for elders,
which is kind of a checklist of what are the things that you are doing.
Are you being with people?
Are you walking in nature?
And they'll give you a whole idea of the things that you could be doing to increase your joy.
(19:27):
How do you find that?
It's C-O-P-P-E-S.
Google it, and it will come up.
Okay, that's great to know.
The other thing about Martin Seligman is he is the founder of positive psychology, and
he's been studying happiness for years.
And he has three levels of happiness that he describes.
The first is the pleasant life, where we're enjoying ourselves.
(19:47):
We're going out to dinner, we're having parties, whatever it is, being with friends.
The second level that he talks about is the good life, being a decent person, doing good
things.
And the third thing he talks about, which he calls the highest level of happiness, and
I equate this level with joy, is living a meaningful life.
(20:08):
That you are doing, you are serving your fellow human beings.
You are making a difference in whatever tiny way it can be to improve the lives of people
around you.
How does that work?
I mean, I think we, I know that that works.
We do feel good when we do something for somebody else.
It's so basic.
(20:29):
I mean, didn't mom and dad tell you that that was what you were supposed to do?
How does that little magic thing happen that when you reach out to somebody and help them
in any way, everybody feels good?
What happens?
Human connection.
We are human connectors.
I love Vivek Murthy's work on connection in his book, Together, recommended to people.
(20:54):
We like to be together.
We like to heal each other.
We like to embrace each other emotionally as well as physically.
We are doing it, I mean, living a meaningful life with this podcast.
I hope so.
And I think that must give you joy.
Oh, an incredible amount of joy.
Maybe not as much as when I'm dancing, but almost, almost as much.
(21:17):
I wanted to, you know, I know we have to wind down soon, but there was, I just want to talk
about living in line with one's ethical and spiritual ideals.
Can you address that in any way?
Well, I think that's what a meaningful life is all about.
I'm going to go back to Cicero.
Okay.
Cicero, before the Christian era, was writing about in a book, in an essay called Disinnectitude
(21:41):
on Old Age, he says the way to live is to live ethically.
To live so that you are setting a legacy for the future and that knowing at the end of life
or even toward the end of life that you have done well, you have done good, you have lived
ethically, is the greatest joy that anyone could have.
(22:04):
You know what I love?
I love that you said live so that you are, I wrote it down, doing some, a legacy.
Leaving a legacy.
Leaving a legacy.
Yes, a legacy.
You know, I think people used to think about that more.
Maybe we don't do that so much anymore.
Well, I, you know, I was talking to my daughter and we were talking about her dad and one,
(22:26):
I said, what is, what makes him happy?
He said, you know, Papi lives for the people.
He lives for the people.
He cares about social justice.
He cares about equality.
That's what he lives for.
And he said, and my daughter said to me, and mom, you know, you are such an inspiration
because you have worked your life in such a way that you are living in your older years
(22:48):
with joy.
Both of those are legacies.
They're different legacies.
I hope I've done some good too in social justice ways, but they're both legacies to live for
our children and for the others that we meet and connect with.
I love that idea of legacy.
I think I'd like to explore that more.
Maybe that's something we could talk about in another time, legacy, what we leave behind
(23:09):
for others.
One other thing I'd want to say before we close.
Sure.
Extremely important in your older years is to connect with young people.
My husband and I have a younger crowd.
They're not so young now.
They're 50s, but we've been friends with them for 20 years and they give us so much life
(23:30):
and joy.
My positivity pod that I talked about.
Right.
There are two, one person in her 40s, one in her 50s, young people.
So go out and make younger friends.
Make young friends.
It is so helpful.
And we found them through our love of dance.
We went to parties and all of a sudden we had a group of friends.
I know.
(23:51):
Dance does work.
I did an episode on that.
We should listen.
We should all go dancing together.
What do you think?
That would be great.
Well, look, before we actually do go dancing together, how can we leave today?
What do you want to say so that whoever's listening can think about it today and build
some joy into his or her life?
So I want to offer you the idea that joy is possible, even as we age, that we can overcome
(24:19):
the troubles of our youth, our past, if we have them, and that we do that principally
through connection, through gratitude, and through looking to live a meaningful life
and a joyful life.
Look for the fun, too.
Oh, yeah.
We have to have fun.
Sometimes it's not so easy to find, but eventually it does creep back into your life if you let
(24:41):
it.
Okay.
Before we go, you had a story about one of the other people you worked with.
It was a man who said something really wonderful that I want to remember.
Go ahead, tell that story.
So this man, as a client of mine, is an artist, and he wrote an article that got published,
and he was very excited about it.
And he came in, and he was talking about what he was going to do next and all his future
(25:04):
projects.
And I said, gee, I said, you're really bringing a lot of joy today.
Where is that coming from?
And he said, I feel young.
I have a future.
Oh, my gosh.
And as you pointed out, it's all about hope in that case.
He was setting up his next projects and his life.
He's 88 years old.
All of a sudden, the light was back in his eyes.
(25:25):
Yes, something to live for now.
That's right.
That's what we have to find, something to live for.
We have to have hope, and we're going to search out joy.
It is a good time of year for joy.
We're going to be singing all those beautiful songs of the season that bring us a lot of
joy.
I'll remember you when I'm singing them.
I'll remember you when I'm dancing.
Maybe we can go for a walk sometime, or maybe we can have our own positivity pod.
(25:47):
What do you think?
That sounds great, Denise.
Thank you for having me on today.
It was so good to meet you.
I'm smiling.
I'm feeling a little joyful, I think.
Thank you so much.
You're welcome.
Bye-bye.
This concludes today's podcast.
We're always looking for new ideas, so feel free to reach out to Judy Raper, Associate
(26:09):
Dean of Community Engagement at Greenfield Community College at 413-775-1819.
If you have an idea, you'd love to share.
Special thanks to the creators of Backyard Oasis, Denise Schwartz, Chad Fuller, Dennis
Lee, and Christine Copeland.
Have a great day!
Welcome to Backyard Oasis, a podcast designed by and for older adults living in the beautiful
(00:09):
Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts and produced in the tech studios at Greenfield
Community College in Greenfield, Massachusetts.
Backyard Oasis reaches out to older adults who seek knowledge to help them live more
thoughtfully, healthfully, and happily, who hope to inspire others with their ideas and
(00:31):
who serve their communities in the interest of their greater good.
Hello I'm Denise Schwartz, your host.
It's November leading into December.
Now for many, that's a time of planning for holidays.
To bring us feelings of joy and also sadness.
(00:55):
It's not easy to think about feeling joyful sometimes, you know, sometimes when you assess
the state of the world or the state of your own self that is growing older.
It takes some time to wake up joy.
Our guest today hopes to inspire us to reach for more joy in our lives.
She's Dr. Pat Romney.
(01:15):
She's an 80-year-old writer, psychologist, and leadership coach.
She leads workshops on aging with joy.
And she is dedicated to bringing more joy into the lives of all humans, especially those
who are older adults.
She says she has always loved older people.
And she also said, lo and behold, she's become one.
(01:38):
Haven't we all?
So hi, Pat.
Hi, Denise.
You know, I'm really glad you're here.
It's a time when I think we really need to learn to understand what joy can do for us
and how we can grab onto it when not everything is so good.
So I hope that's where we're going to go today.
But so I've been reading a little bit more about joy.
And I've noticed that many folks who've studied and written about it have noted that joy and
(02:03):
sorrow are deeply connected.
You know, both are related to what matters most to us.
That kept coming up in what I was reading.
What matters most to you is what brings you joy.
Now I remember in high school when I first read Kylo Gibran's poem called On Joy and
Sorrow.
And I know you've told me you've read that too.
(02:24):
That poem meant so much to me back then that I taped it to my bedroom wall.
And I have it taped to my office wall today.
There are two lines in the poem that struck me, and they still do.
And if you don't mind, I'm just going to read those two because I really love this and I
like to think about what it means.
So these are the two lines.
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has
(02:50):
given you sorrow that is now giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful, look again into your heart and you shall see that in truth you
are weeping for that which has been your delight.
In a pat, I love that word delight.
And I think we can connect that to joy in a lot of ways.
(03:11):
So let's talk about joy rather than sorrow even though one often leads to the other.
Okay?
That sounds good.
Okay.
So you say you started to think about joy back in the 1990s.
What caused you to do that?
Well I was beginning to meditate and I came upon the work of Echneth Eoswaran who's written
(03:32):
a book called God Makes the Rivers to Flow.
And his approach to meditation is to memorize prayers and poems and to recite those to yourself.
And so I found this poem by St. Augustine called Entering into Joy.
And the poem begins, Imagine if all the tumult of the body were to quiet down, along with
(03:57):
all our busy thoughts of earth, sea, and air, if the very world should stop and the mind
cease thinking about itself, go beyond itself and be quite still.
And he goes on, St. Augustine being the Catholic leader of the church, and it ends with, Would
this not be what is written in Scripture?
(04:20):
Enter ye into the joy of our Lord.
Well I'm a lapsed Catholic.
I went all the way through Catholic college.
So this really spoke to me because here I was in my late 50s with three children, two
aging parents, more jobs than I want to talk about right now.
And I needed to take that deep breath and to imagine that there was a place of joy in
(04:47):
the silence and in the peace that I've read about in this poem.
Did you find it?
Little by little.
Some years later I read the Book of Joy by Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama, and there
I found it again.
(05:08):
And after reading that book, I began to do some work with some colleagues of mine on
joy and presenting joy.
So I absolutely have found joy, particularly at 80.
It's the most joyous time of my life.
So I want to hear how you allow others to find joy.
And I also would like to know what your daily routine is like and how you find joy every
(05:33):
day.
Can we do those two things?
Sure.
So how I help others to find joy, the most important component I think is connection.
Yes, that's what.
So you know, making, I mean several groups with peoples, some of which I've started.
One of us, one of them is our cul-de-sac book club, which I've told you about.
(05:54):
We meet roughly about once a month.
And I said to our neighbors who, three other couples, we're all in the senior years.
We've known each other for years, but not well.
But now most of us are retired.
We're home all the time.
So we meet once a month.
And I said, why don't we read memoirs?
And someone else in the circle said, great idea.
(06:17):
Why don't we make it a dinner?
So one person brings the appetizer, one family brings the appetizer, one family brings the
salad, one family brings the dinner, one family brings the dessert.
And we read memoirs.
We've gotten to know each other so well, to connect, to help each other out when one
couple is away or somebody has to, has had a knee surgery, they drove my husband to his
(06:39):
physical therapy, our neighbors did.
So we began to help each other and we connected in that way.
I also have another group that's called the Positivity Pod.
And that is a group of five of us.
I'm the oldest and our youngest is in her early 50s.
We also meet weekly and we focus on positivity and joy.
(07:01):
And we've offered workshops together on that topic.
What do you mean you focus on it?
We, following the work of, I'm going to blank on his name right now.
That's okay, we'll come back.
But we follow this work called positive intelligence.
And we always start with a meditation.
(07:23):
Then we do a check-in.
And then we have a topic that one of us will decide upon, whoever is leading that morning.
So we meet for 45 minutes every Wednesday morning before work and we are together.
And we share our crises.
We share our joys.
(07:43):
We share how to center ourselves and to move forward in the world.
And we always remember that we're together.
So I'm thinking that togetherness is sort of what we've been talking about in the last
episode that we did.
We were talking about neighborhoods and being neighbors.
And we're really talking about the same thing, this connected thing.
(08:06):
And it does work.
But you've set it up so that in several of your groups you work on, you get together
on a regular basis.
Now that seems to be something that you can only do when you have a lot of time.
So this could be the time when you're going to find joy because you have time to connect
and do that.
But how do you take the topics that everyone brings to say the group that you just talked
(08:27):
about that bring you to joy?
Are the topics, what are they?
Oh, anything and everything.
But how does any kind of topic bring you to joy?
I think joy comes from the connection with one another and the support that we have for
(08:48):
each other.
And I would quibble a little bit with your, I mean, certainly we have more time.
I still work.
And my work brings me great joy.
So I don't have lots of time.
But I think back to when I was 17 in my first job for Metropolitan Life Insurance Company,
every Friday afternoon, a group of us would go out bowling.
(09:10):
They would go drinking.
I didn't drink at that time.
So they'd go for a drink and then, or else they'd drink at the bowling alley.
And it was every week.
There's something about the routine, the expectation.
My husband and I on Friday nights now, this started during COVID, we go out to dinner every
single Friday night.
So in a week of stress, of pressure, of work to be done and family to be taken care of,
(09:37):
we can always look forward to Friday when we take a deep breath and we just spend time
together.
So I think something about routine helps us define joy.
Structure.
Yeah.
So if I was a person who came to you and said, oh, Pat, help me find some joy in my life,
how would we start?
(09:57):
Well, I'd want to know what you love, what you care about, what matters to you.
I'd want to know about your family.
I'd want to know certainly about your connections, who you're connecting with, how often, whether
those connections bring you joy, whether they're positive and uplifting.
That's how we'd start.
(10:18):
And you said that there are some activities that people come to you to find joy that they
can be involved in.
There were activities and attitudes.
Well, attitude, you read a lot about this in the Book of Joy.
There are particular attitudes like perspective.
I was writing about this yesterday in my blog.
(10:40):
Having some, one of my family members is going through a lot of difficult moments.
And I thought, wow, with them, supporting them a little bit like, oh, I'm too old for
this, too many problems.
And then I thought, wait a minute, I have perspective.
After living 80 years, I know that we go through tough times and we can come out of tough times.
(11:07):
And I can bring that.
I can offer that to my family members, that in my support.
So how I look at things, my husband was saying to me the other day, it all depends on what
you choose to focus on.
Are you going to focus on the troubles and let yourself be buried in them and just stew
in what's wrong?
(11:28):
Or are you going to say, boy, I have gratitude even for my troubles because I'm still alive.
I'm still able to move.
I'm still able to think.
But do you find yourself and do your students or do you call them students?
People come to you to help find joy.
Do you find that sometimes you have to force yourself to have that attitude?
(11:53):
I mean, it can't always come easy.
But I don't think force isn't the word that I would use.
What word would you use?
I would say, invite myself.
I want to invite myself to look at this situation differently.
I want to invite myself to think about the possibility that emerges from a problem.
(12:14):
And you and I were talking earlier about hope.
I want to invite myself to find where's the hope in this?
Where's the lesson?
What can I be grateful for?
That's the other attitude that I find.
The two attitudes I want to access most often are gratitude and humility.
(12:35):
Gratitude for being alive.
Gratitude for being reasonably well.
Gratitude for having a home and a bed to sleep in.
Absolutely.
But there are times when things aren't great in your life.
And it seems so hard to have that kind of attitude.
I'm not saying you're feeling depressed or anything.
(12:56):
Well, maybe you are.
So how do you grab that and make it be authentic?
I have done it through my reading, through my regular practices, through my connections
with others.
I know there are always people there to support me.
Right.
I know I can't, and I can see the other side of.
So it's cultivating positive practices.
(13:19):
I guess knowing that other people do that, okay, other people take a time in their life
that might not be so great and say, no, wait a minute, I'm going to look at where I can
find the best part of this or what I can grow from.
Knowing that lots of people do that kind of gives you a sense that it is authentic enough,
that it's not artificial.
(13:40):
And I know that other people are feeling the same way I do, you know, that's the connection
thing.
You really do feel better about your problems or whatever you're facing.
It's that old misery loves company thing, but I hate to say it that way because it sounds
so sad.
But that really, I think, does help when you find out, oh yeah, you're feeling the same
way I am, okay, this is what you did when that happened to you.
Now I feel the same way.
I feel a little better.
(14:01):
It's finding someone who's kind of like you in a way.
I 100% agree with that.
And the misery loves company, I don't know so much.
We may come together in our misery for certain.
But if we stay in our misery, we're not helped.
And if we're around somebody who's miserable all the time, we want to turn the corner and
(14:21):
find somebody else to be with.
So if we can come together in our misery and uplift each other.
Well you know what I find happens, if I say I have a lot of girlfriends, and you know,
my husband and I, we talk to, I have a lot of friends.
And if we start talking about the thing that's bothering us right now, the thing, you know,
maybe we don't feel well.
And that person says, you know, we do the organ recital, oh my liver hurts, oh my head hurts,
(14:44):
oh my blah blah, and we start doing that.
And then I find, you know what happens, I started laughing when you were talking about
it.
I find that we get to the point where we just look at each other and just start to kind
of laugh because in a way, it's kind of funny.
We're all facing this stuff.
And especially for older adults, I know people say, oh no, are we just going to talk about
(15:04):
our medical stuff?
Well let's face it, it is a really big part of aging.
And so when you talk with older adults in particular, how do you talk to them about the medical
stuff that can be so bad and be so serious and still encourage them to find joy in their
lives?
(15:25):
So I'm thinking about three different scenarios.
If I'm talking with a therapy client of mine, I'm going to listen as long as they need to
talk about whatever the physical problems or emotional problems they have and what they're
going through.
And I'm going to be as empathic as I possibly can.
(15:49):
And at some point, I'm going to invite them to wonder, is anything good happening?
Is anything positive happening right now?
Is there hope for this treatment?
Is there anything that you can hold on to that gives you a moment of joy or relief or
(16:10):
again of hope?
And do you find that people always are able to find that moment of peace or hope?
Or are they not?
I think many people, most people are.
Even if it's who's holding you through that.
Right, who's holding your hand, who's standing by your bedside.
The nurse who comes to clean.
(16:32):
You know, I worked for many years in a nursing home and I switched my practice to working
with elders.
And the people that elders in nursing homes love the most are the AIDS.
Why is that?
Because they clean them.
In the most intimate ways, they're touching them.
They're being with them.
They're caring for them.
(16:53):
So even that is a moment of pleasure.
Another scenario I think about though is when I go out, you know, I told you my husband
and I go out every Friday night and sometimes we go with another couple.
Or you know, couple of couples.
And I noticed that my elder friends will often start with the scenario, the organ recital.
I interrupt that.
(17:15):
Not say don't do that.
But I will start talking about positive things.
Because I feel that in that scenario, we're out to dinner.
We're to have a good time.
So what are we going to talk about?
We're going to talk about the wonderful movie we saw or the play that we went to or the
grandchildren were growing so beautifully.
(17:35):
So in that scenario, I will try to help make that organ recital a shorter recital.
That's a really good idea.
I wanted to look at, I wanted to see if you could address something that I found here.
Let me see.
I'm not sure I have my glasses.
I'm not sure I can read them.
I wonder if you could do this.
I thought these three things that tell us about ways that we can build joy into our
(17:59):
lives kind of made sense.
We've talked about one of them.
One is grow in authenticity and live more into one's strengths.
So we're going to talk about that.
Grow in depth of relationships and contributing to others.
We've spent a lot of time talking about this.
When number three, I really want to think about this.
(18:21):
Live more aligned with one's ethical and spiritual ideals.
I love it.
I do too.
I think of principally the work of Martin Seligman, who's the father of positive psychology.
For anyone who's interested, go to via.org, virtuesandaction.org, and it's also via.com.
(18:43):
You can take an assessment that will help you see what are your major strengths and virtues.
Oh, I love that.
So mine is zest.
That's my top.
I don't know.
Having just met you, I have talked a little bit about you.
I don't know.
Zest.
You did say you were a party girl.
(19:03):
Yes.
So just knowing what your virtues are.
So I think that's one place.
And I also want to mention the COPS assessment, C-O-P-P-E-S, which is an assessment for elders,
which is kind of a checklist of what are the things that you are doing.
Are you being with people?
Are you walking in nature?
And they'll give you a whole idea of the things that you could be doing to increase your joy.
(19:27):
How do you find that?
It's C-O-P-P-E-S.
Google it, and it will come up.
Okay, that's great to know.
The other thing about Martin Seligman is he is the founder of positive psychology, and
he's been studying happiness for years.
And he has three levels of happiness that he describes.
The first is the pleasant life, where we're enjoying ourselves.
(19:47):
We're going out to dinner, we're having parties, whatever it is, being with friends.
The second level that he talks about is the good life, being a decent person, doing good
things.
And the third thing he talks about, which he calls the highest level of happiness, and
I equate this level with joy, is living a meaningful life.
(20:08):
That you are doing, you are serving your fellow human beings.
You are making a difference in whatever tiny way it can be to improve the lives of people
around you.
How does that work?
I mean, I think we, I know that that works.
We do feel good when we do something for somebody else.
It's so basic.
(20:29):
I mean, didn't mom and dad tell you that that was what you were supposed to do?
How does that little magic thing happen that when you reach out to somebody and help them
in any way, everybody feels good?
What happens?
Human connection.
We are human connectors.
I love Vivek Murthy's work on connection in his book, Together, recommended to people.
(20:54):
We like to be together.
We like to heal each other.
We like to embrace each other emotionally as well as physically.
We are doing it, I mean, living a meaningful life with this podcast.
I hope so.
And I think that must give you joy.
Oh, an incredible amount of joy.
Maybe not as much as when I'm dancing, but almost, almost as much.
(21:17):
I wanted to, you know, I know we have to wind down soon, but there was, I just want to talk
about living in line with one's ethical and spiritual ideals.
Can you address that in any way?
Well, I think that's what a meaningful life is all about.
I'm going to go back to Cicero.
Okay.
Cicero, before the Christian era, was writing about in a book, in an essay called Disinnectitude
(21:41):
on Old Age, he says the way to live is to live ethically.
To live so that you are setting a legacy for the future and that knowing at the end of life
or even toward the end of life that you have done well, you have done good, you have lived
ethically, is the greatest joy that anyone could have.
(22:04):
You know what I love?
I love that you said live so that you are, I wrote it down, doing some, a legacy.
Leaving a legacy.
Leaving a legacy.
Yes, a legacy.
You know, I think people used to think about that more.
Maybe we don't do that so much anymore.
Well, I, you know, I was talking to my daughter and we were talking about her dad and one,
(22:26):
I said, what is, what makes him happy?
He said, you know, Papi lives for the people.
He lives for the people.
He cares about social justice.
He cares about equality.
That's what he lives for.
And he said, and my daughter said to me, and mom, you know, you are such an inspiration
because you have worked your life in such a way that you are living in your older years
(22:48):
with joy.
Both of those are legacies.
They're different legacies.
I hope I've done some good too in social justice ways, but they're both legacies to live for
our children and for the others that we meet and connect with.
I love that idea of legacy.
I think I'd like to explore that more.
Maybe that's something we could talk about in another time, legacy, what we leave behind
(23:09):
for others.
One other thing I'd want to say before we close.
Sure.
Extremely important in your older years is to connect with young people.
My husband and I have a younger crowd.
They're not so young now.
They're 50s, but we've been friends with them for 20 years and they give us so much life
(23:30):
and joy.
My positivity pod that I talked about.
Right.
There are two, one person in her 40s, one in her 50s, young people.
So go out and make younger friends.
Make young friends.
It is so helpful.
And we found them through our love of dance.
We went to parties and all of a sudden we had a group of friends.
I know.
(23:51):
Dance does work.
I did an episode on that.
We should listen.
We should all go dancing together.
What do you think?
That would be great.
Well, look, before we actually do go dancing together, how can we leave today?
What do you want to say so that whoever's listening can think about it today and build
some joy into his or her life?
So I want to offer you the idea that joy is possible, even as we age, that we can overcome
(24:19):
the troubles of our youth, our past, if we have them, and that we do that principally
through connection, through gratitude, and through looking to live a meaningful life
and a joyful life.
Look for the fun, too.
Oh, yeah.
We have to have fun.
Sometimes it's not so easy to find, but eventually it does creep back into your life if you let
(24:41):
it.
Okay.
Before we go, you had a story about one of the other people you worked with.
It was a man who said something really wonderful that I want to remember.
Go ahead, tell that story.
So this man, as a client of mine, is an artist, and he wrote an article that got published,
and he was very excited about it.
And he came in, and he was talking about what he was going to do next and all his future
(25:04):
projects.
And I said, gee, I said, you're really bringing a lot of joy today.
Where is that coming from?
And he said, I feel young.
I have a future.
Oh, my gosh.
And as you pointed out, it's all about hope in that case.
He was setting up his next projects and his life.
He's 88 years old.
All of a sudden, the light was back in his eyes.
(25:25):
Yes, something to live for now.
That's right.
That's what we have to find, something to live for.
We have to have hope, and we're going to search out joy.
It is a good time of year for joy.
We're going to be singing all those beautiful songs of the season that bring us a lot of
joy.
I'll remember you when I'm singing them.
I'll remember you when I'm dancing.
Maybe we can go for a walk sometime, or maybe we can have our own positivity pod.
(25:47):
What do you think?
That sounds great, Denise.
Thank you for having me on today.
It was so good to meet you.
I'm smiling.
I'm feeling a little joyful, I think.
Thank you so much.
You're welcome.
Bye-bye.
This concludes today's podcast.
We're always looking for new ideas, so feel free to reach out to Judy Raper, Associate
(26:09):
Dean of Community Engagement at Greenfield Community College at 413-775-1819.
If you have an idea, you'd love to share.
Special thanks to the creators of Backyard Oasis, Denise Schwartz, Chad Fuller, Dennis
Lee, and Christine Copeland.
Have a great day!
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