July 17, 2025 • 10 mins
In this episode of #FeelingsMatter, hosts Michelle Stinson Ross, Tina Schweiger, and Heather Hampton explore the emotion of feeling glad - that sense of being pleased, happy, and gratified. The conversation delves into how gladness differs from related emotions like happiness and joy, examining its unique combination of gratitude and surprise. The hosts discuss the sustaining nature of gladness compared to more fleeting emotions and emphasize the importance of recognizing these positive feelings when they occur.
Episode Highlights:
This episode of the #FeelingsMatter Podcast was recorded and produced at MSR Studios in Saint Paul, MN.Copyright 2025, all rights reserved. No reproduction, excerpting, or other use without written permission.
This episode is sponsored by
FeelWise - bridging the gap between reflection and resilience, offering practical tools to help people overcome obstacles, embrace change, and grow stronger emotionally. https://www.feel-wise.com/
Don’t miss a moment of the conversation, subscribe to the show on your favorite podcasting platform
Podcast theme music by Dubush Miaw from Pixabay
This episode of the #FeelingsMatter Podcast was recorded and produced at MSR Studios in Saint Paul, MN. No reproduction, excerpting, or other use without written permission.
This episode is sponsored by
FeelWise - bridging the gap between reflection and resilience, offering practical tools to help people overcome obstacles, embrace change, and grow stronger emotionally. https://www.feel-wise.com/
Don’t miss a moment of the conversation, subscribe to the show on your favorite podcasting platform
Episode Highlights:
- Michelle defines gladness as "the intersection of joy and gratitude," distinguishing it from simple gratitude (being grateful for paid bills doesn't spark gladness) and noting how relationships with friends create true gladness in her life
- Tina connects gladness to unexpected pleasant encounters, using the phrase "I am so glad that I ran into you" as an example of how gladness often contains an element of surprise mixed with gratitude and joy
- The hosts distinguish gladness from happiness, describing happiness as more ephemeral and fragile (like a balloon that could pop), while gladness has a "longer shelf life" and is more nourishing to the soul
- Heather notes that while happiness can be more superficial and driven by external circumstances, gladness has more substance because of its gratitude component, which helps ground it and make it sustaining
- Michelle emphasizes that the goal isn't necessarily to have more positive emotions in our lives, but to become more aware of when we're experiencing them, noting that we often miss moments of gladness rather than lacking them entirely
This episode of the #FeelingsMatter Podcast was recorded and produced at MSR Studios in Saint Paul, MN.Copyright 2025, all rights reserved. No reproduction, excerpting, or other use without written permission.
This episode is sponsored by
FeelWise - bridging the gap between reflection and resilience, offering practical tools to help people overcome obstacles, embrace change, and grow stronger emotionally. https://www.feel-wise.com/
Don’t miss a moment of the conversation, subscribe to the show on your favorite podcasting platform
Podcast theme music by Dubush Miaw from Pixabay
This episode of the #FeelingsMatter Podcast was recorded and produced at MSR Studios in Saint Paul, MN. No reproduction, excerpting, or other use without written permission.
This episode is sponsored by
FeelWise - bridging the gap between reflection and resilience, offering practical tools to help people overcome obstacles, embrace change, and grow stronger emotionally. https://www.feel-wise.com/
Don’t miss a moment of the conversation, subscribe to the show on your favorite podcasting platform
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Do you have trouble talking about your feelings, You're not alone.
It's a topic that can make even the most powerful
people somewhat squeamish. You're listening to Feelings Matter, where our
mission is to demystify everything about emotions so that we
(00:23):
can all get more comfortable in talking about them. Joining Heather,
Tina and Michelle as we unpack a new angle on
emotions and the psychology of human nature. Feelings Matter. Hello everyone,
(00:45):
and welcome back to Feelings Matter. I'm Michelle Stithan Ross,
I'm Teena.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Schweiger, and I'm Heather Hmpton.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
The emotion that I drew for this week was glad
and just to help every everybody level set. So in
the case of glad, what is that that's feeling pleased, happy,
and gratified? So challenge questions you can ask yourself to
just like validate. Is it glad that I'm feeling? Are
(01:15):
you feeling a sense of happiness or contentment? Do you
feel a sense of relief or joy after accomplishing something?
Are you grateful for the things and people in your life?
Do you feel a sense of harmony and peace within yourself?
Are you finding enjoyment in the present moment. Now, Granted,
(01:38):
I don't necessarily enjoy witnessing Tina become exasperated, but I
definitely am grateful that again, Tina finds Heather and I
as safe people that she can talk about something like
that and work her way through a difficult emotion. So
(02:00):
in that case, I'm definitely sensing that gratitude aspect. And
as I got to contemplating what is glad, I feel
like that one's one of those intersectional emotions where it's
part joy, part gratitude, that it's the intersection of those
two that create gladness in your life. That it's more
(02:24):
than just gratitude. There's lots of things that I'm grateful for.
I am grateful that I have a comfortable bed to
sleep in. I'm grateful that my bills are paid honeys
as grateful as I am. That does not make me glad.
That's just a necessary that doesn't spark any joy for
me at all. But relationships, my friendships with Heather and Tina,
(02:52):
those things make me glad. It is a nexus of
joy and gratitude, And I am so very glad that
you got in my life. Thank you, Ah, I am
glad very nice. I think aout you too, the flavors
of glad come up for you.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
There's a phrase that comes up for me that you
hear if you're out and about and you run into
somebody that you really like unexpectedly. I am so glad
that I ran into you. That's a common time when
I would hear or say the word glad, And I
do feel like it really matches up with your definition
(03:31):
there that it's a part of gratitude filled with joy
in the moment, but it's like a almost like a
mix of a surprise in that case.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
So I like, I liked your definition with fits.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
I about you. I love I do love your definition.
And also of what's coming up for me is like
what how would we distinguish happy from glad?
Speaker 4 (03:57):
What?
Speaker 2 (03:57):
What is the what is it a where we live?
Is it how we feel it? I don't know the
answer for myself. I'm just been emulling this over as
we've been talking. They are very akin obviously they live
in the same family. I do Michelle's thoughts around gratitude
because I wouldn't if I was feeling happy, I wouldn't
(04:20):
not necessarily automatically equate gratitude in with happiness.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Yeah, I was gonna say the same thing, like, I
don't see that. I certainly can include gratitude, but I
think happiness isn't technically like the combination the same as
glad is.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
I see it happy as more akin to joy, but maybe.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Not as effervescent like I'm happy, I'm so happy, Like
you can have that. But then joy is like something
that comes from the center of your being, whereas happy
maybe comes from the periphery of your being, or it's
a little.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
More superficial, superficial, ephemeral. As much as the media talks
about happiness and whatever, for me, that distinction, particularly between
happiness and joy is just how long lasting it is. Right,
I can cultivate joy in my life, and joy is
(05:15):
something that is abiding and everlasting, where happiness is more
of the fleeting thing it. I feel like happiness can
very frequently relate to a flirtation, but just those more
fleeting feelings that they come and they go, and yeah,
(05:36):
they tend to be driven more by a circumstance, something
outside me than really tapping into who I am, what's
at the core of me. So getting back to glad,
because we're talking about happiness, joy, gladness.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
I want to hap you before we move off of
that happiness real quick. You remember the happiness little feeing
is a balloon. So it's filled, it's light, it's ephemeral,
it floats, it's.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yellow, it could popit.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Any moment.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
It's fragile.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Happiness, it's fragile. We're not even talking about happiness. That there,
go get a bonus emotion.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
That's also what I'm getting to is that the ephemeral
nature of something like happiness, the fragility of something like happiness,
doesn't relate at least to me. It hits different than
what I, in my mind and my body would call gladness, right,
(06:40):
because I don't feel like gladness is something that is
quite that ephemeral. It can take you by surprise, like
you said, Tina, and in a moment of oh, I
wasn't expecting to see you, but now that you're here,
I'm so glad to see you. So it can take
us by surprise. But I think it has Dare I say,
(07:02):
a longer shelf life than something like happiness, that I
can actually feed my soul on gladness where I can't.
Happiness is more like candy, where gladness is something that
is more nourishing.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
There's more like dopamine and happiness, and we want to
chase that, and that's why everybody's obsessed with chasing happiness.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
But it isn't as grounding.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yeah, And I think it's that gratitude aspect of gladness
that helps grant it and make it a bit more
of something that's sustaining in your life.
Speaker 5 (07:42):
Feelings Matter is brought to you by feel Wise.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Most people can identify three emotions sad, mad, and glad,
but there are over one hundred and fifty.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
Six ways to truly express how you feel. Tools help
you build your emotional vocabulary and transform understanding into action.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Discover the language of emotions on the fuel wise website
at bitley slash fuel wise. That's bi dot l y
slash f e E l WI s E fuel wise.
Turn emotional awareness into your superpower.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
And I think that surprise, that gift element that you
talked about earlier is also there. If you try to
cultivate the happiness, great, you can do that, but you
can't cultivate a surprise meeting with a friend at the
grocery store.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
That's just the world.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Then you, and so like that gift is rare and
wonderful and I think adds to that sort of that surprise,
adds to that gratitude, like of all the things that
had to happen for us to be here in this
moment to get other unplanned, that's like beautiful.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
And this is why we want to talk about emotions
like gladness, because the better we're able to recognize them,
the better we're able to be aware of them in
the moment. It's not that we don't experience it, it's
that sometimes we miss that we experienced it. And flexing
(09:29):
that awareness muscle is so very important in really being
attuned to feelings of gladness, happiness, joy, et cetera. Because
it's not so much that we need more of it
in our lives, but we.
Speaker 6 (09:46):
Just need to be more aware of when we're experiencing it.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
St
Do you have trouble talking about your feelings, You're not alone.
It's a topic that can make even the most powerful
people somewhat squeamish. You're listening to Feelings Matter, where our
mission is to demystify everything about emotions so that we
(00:23):
can all get more comfortable in talking about them. Joining Heather,
Tina and Michelle as we unpack a new angle on
emotions and the psychology of human nature. Feelings Matter. Hello everyone,
(00:45):
and welcome back to Feelings Matter. I'm Michelle Stithan Ross,
I'm Teena.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Schweiger, and I'm Heather Hmpton.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
The emotion that I drew for this week was glad
and just to help every everybody level set. So in
the case of glad, what is that that's feeling pleased, happy,
and gratified? So challenge questions you can ask yourself to
just like validate. Is it glad that I'm feeling? Are
(01:15):
you feeling a sense of happiness or contentment? Do you
feel a sense of relief or joy after accomplishing something?
Are you grateful for the things and people in your life?
Do you feel a sense of harmony and peace within yourself?
Are you finding enjoyment in the present moment. Now, Granted,
(01:38):
I don't necessarily enjoy witnessing Tina become exasperated, but I
definitely am grateful that again, Tina finds Heather and I
as safe people that she can talk about something like
that and work her way through a difficult emotion. So
(02:00):
in that case, I'm definitely sensing that gratitude aspect. And
as I got to contemplating what is glad, I feel
like that one's one of those intersectional emotions where it's
part joy, part gratitude, that it's the intersection of those
two that create gladness in your life. That it's more
(02:24):
than just gratitude. There's lots of things that I'm grateful for.
I am grateful that I have a comfortable bed to
sleep in. I'm grateful that my bills are paid honeys
as grateful as I am. That does not make me glad.
That's just a necessary that doesn't spark any joy for
me at all. But relationships, my friendships with Heather and Tina,
(02:52):
those things make me glad. It is a nexus of
joy and gratitude, And I am so very glad that
you got in my life. Thank you, Ah, I am
glad very nice. I think aout you too, the flavors
of glad come up for you.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
There's a phrase that comes up for me that you
hear if you're out and about and you run into
somebody that you really like unexpectedly. I am so glad
that I ran into you. That's a common time when
I would hear or say the word glad, And I
do feel like it really matches up with your definition
(03:31):
there that it's a part of gratitude filled with joy
in the moment, but it's like a almost like a
mix of a surprise in that case.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
So I like, I liked your definition with fits.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
I about you. I love I do love your definition.
And also of what's coming up for me is like
what how would we distinguish happy from glad?
Speaker 4 (03:57):
What?
Speaker 2 (03:57):
What is the what is it a where we live?
Is it how we feel it? I don't know the
answer for myself. I'm just been emulling this over as
we've been talking. They are very akin obviously they live
in the same family. I do Michelle's thoughts around gratitude
because I wouldn't if I was feeling happy, I wouldn't
(04:20):
not necessarily automatically equate gratitude in with happiness.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Yeah, I was gonna say the same thing, like, I
don't see that. I certainly can include gratitude, but I
think happiness isn't technically like the combination the same as
glad is.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
I see it happy as more akin to joy, but maybe.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Not as effervescent like I'm happy, I'm so happy, Like
you can have that. But then joy is like something
that comes from the center of your being, whereas happy
maybe comes from the periphery of your being, or it's
a little.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
More superficial, superficial, ephemeral. As much as the media talks
about happiness and whatever, for me, that distinction, particularly between
happiness and joy is just how long lasting it is. Right,
I can cultivate joy in my life, and joy is
(05:15):
something that is abiding and everlasting, where happiness is more
of the fleeting thing it. I feel like happiness can
very frequently relate to a flirtation, but just those more
fleeting feelings that they come and they go, and yeah,
(05:36):
they tend to be driven more by a circumstance, something
outside me than really tapping into who I am, what's
at the core of me. So getting back to glad,
because we're talking about happiness, joy, gladness.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
I want to hap you before we move off of
that happiness real quick. You remember the happiness little feeing
is a balloon. So it's filled, it's light, it's ephemeral,
it floats, it's.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yellow, it could popit.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Any moment.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
It's fragile.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Happiness, it's fragile. We're not even talking about happiness. That there,
go get a bonus emotion.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
That's also what I'm getting to is that the ephemeral
nature of something like happiness, the fragility of something like happiness,
doesn't relate at least to me. It hits different than
what I, in my mind and my body would call gladness, right,
(06:40):
because I don't feel like gladness is something that is
quite that ephemeral. It can take you by surprise, like
you said, Tina, and in a moment of oh, I
wasn't expecting to see you, but now that you're here,
I'm so glad to see you. So it can take
us by surprise. But I think it has Dare I say,
(07:02):
a longer shelf life than something like happiness, that I
can actually feed my soul on gladness where I can't.
Happiness is more like candy, where gladness is something that
is more nourishing.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
There's more like dopamine and happiness, and we want to
chase that, and that's why everybody's obsessed with chasing happiness.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
But it isn't as grounding.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yeah, And I think it's that gratitude aspect of gladness
that helps grant it and make it a bit more
of something that's sustaining in your life.
Speaker 5 (07:42):
Feelings Matter is brought to you by feel Wise.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Most people can identify three emotions sad, mad, and glad,
but there are over one hundred and fifty.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
Six ways to truly express how you feel. Tools help
you build your emotional vocabulary and transform understanding into action.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Discover the language of emotions on the fuel wise website
at bitley slash fuel wise. That's bi dot l y
slash f e E l WI s E fuel wise.
Turn emotional awareness into your superpower.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
And I think that surprise, that gift element that you
talked about earlier is also there. If you try to
cultivate the happiness, great, you can do that, but you
can't cultivate a surprise meeting with a friend at the
grocery store.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
That's just the world.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Then you, and so like that gift is rare and
wonderful and I think adds to that sort of that surprise,
adds to that gratitude, like of all the things that
had to happen for us to be here in this
moment to get other unplanned, that's like beautiful.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
And this is why we want to talk about emotions
like gladness, because the better we're able to recognize them,
the better we're able to be aware of them in
the moment. It's not that we don't experience it, it's
that sometimes we miss that we experienced it. And flexing
(09:29):
that awareness muscle is so very important in really being
attuned to feelings of gladness, happiness, joy, et cetera. Because
it's not so much that we need more of it
in our lives, but we.
Speaker 6 (09:46):
Just need to be more aware of when we're experiencing it.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
St
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