And what Tina is asking is, how the hell do I change my mindset? How do I stop trying to find it outside of me? I don't even know how to begin to find it inside of me. In fact, you mentioned that you were depressed, and I was reading an article where you were interviewed, and you said that you were writing in a journal during this period, and the first entry you wrote was, I don't remember being happy, and I don't think I'll ever be happy again. And now you're like the world's guru of happiness. So in that moment, though, Sean, you had an experience that I think everybody has at some point. I'm not happy, and I don't think I'll ever be happy again. And so what's the first What's the first thing that you would want somebody to know if that's where you are right now?

I think the very first thing I'd want is actually the recognition, because I wish I had known that earlier, that whole thing we're talking about. I think you're right. I think we all have moment where you realize, I thought I'd be happy when, and it didn't work. But then if you ask somebody why they're not happy, they'll tell you about one of their externals. I'm not happy right now because I don't have a boyfriend. I'm not happy right now because I've got this guy at work. I'm not happy right now because I don't have enough money. So I think the very first step might be acknowledging it, that the human brain is designed to foil any attempt that success will guarantee happiness. Because every time you hit one of those targets, we We change what we think would create happiness. I think the best example of that is actually the pandemic, because I think at the beginning of it, in the middle of it, everyone thought, think how happy we're going to be when the pandemic wanes. That's true. And the pandemic is waning, and we don't have that guaranteed levels of happiness. And what we forgot was there wasn't 100 % levels of happiness before the pandemic, right?

So I think the first is a recognition that this isn't working. From there, I think that it requires a mindset shift and a behavioral shift. In that article and in the work that I do, I research what we can do to create happiness when the world doesn't look like it should. And I think one important caveat to that is that while I'm talking about what we can do internally, that doesn't negate the need for external changes. We have systemic reasons while there's inequality, discrimination, racism that we should fight. Absolutely. I believe what gives us the power to fight that is the internal changes. And then everyone needs to do it, not just the people seeking happiness, right? The people People who are being discriminatory need to do it, too.

So let's start with the mindset. What is one step, one simple step, that somebody who is sitting alone, like Sean, unhappy Sean, back in the mid-20 10s, writing, I don't remember being happy, and I don't think I'll ever be happy again. How the hell do you change your mindset? Because if you keep saying that to yourself, you're not going to be able to access happiness within.

Right. Well, I think there's something unique in that moment because I was attempting to do something about it because I'm trying to write in a journal to be happier. I'm just like, I don't think this is going to work, which we know from research, that's not a great mentality. You can predict the course of treatment based on whether or not you believe the doctor can heal you. So that was not an auspicious place to start.

Okay. So, Sean, are you telling us that what you're about to tell us to do is going to work. And we should believe in our ability to change our mindset and to take actions and to access happiness.

Yes. I would actually, I would I'll heartily say that. Not only because I've experienced myself, but then we've researched it ever since. I mean, what I've learned in this research is that depression was not the end of the story at all. And that even in the midst of a broken world, in fact, only in the midst of a broken world, have we ever been able to create happiness. So the question is, how do we do so? I think the starting point is realizing not only that our strategy wasn't working, but acknowledging that there are multiple realities in this moment. And one of them is, I don't have a boyfriend or girlfriend, or I don't have this money, or I don't have this job that I want, or I'm frustrated about whatever it is. I think when you acknowledge that that's true, you could say that's one reality, but there's also some other realities as well. Last week, I went to the hospital because I was having chest pain.

You You were young?

Young, yeah. I was in the ER. I missed my very first talk in two decades. I realized in that moment, when they strip you of everything, and the doctor is going to knock on the door. When the doctor knocked on the door, I was like, this could change my life. It didn't. I was completely fine. But in that moment, my whole life changed. My whole life could have changed and was completely disrupted within those moments. I think when we realized that there's multiple realities in moment. One of them is, I miss to talk. I'm not with my family. I'm in a hospital I don't want to be in. That's true. On the other hand, I'm going home today. I'm going home to two kids that I love and a wife that I love. Those are equally true, but in the same reality. And because my brain has a limited amount of resources, I need to choose. And I need to choose what I'm going to be focusing my brain on. There is so much negative in this world that I could spend the entire rest of my life focusing upon that and upon my fear, but that that doesn't serve me at all.

It's not a valuable reality for me. That in the midst of these multiple and true realities, I'm going to look at the ones and focus on the ones that are going to allow me to fix the negative parts of my life, or that are at least going to give me the optimism, happiness, and joy to take the next step and the next step. In depression, I just needed a step forward. I felt like I just stopped moving. So I started doing these habits, and these are the habits that we know work. These are all the things you know about as well. Gratitude, for example. And I think that this would be my answer to someone sitting there and to that 26-year-old boy who is feeling this was in those moments, I needed to scan. I need to stop scanning for all the deficits in my life, and I need to use some of those finite resources to scan the world for the things that I was grateful for. And it was hard because my brain kept being like, yes, but what about this? What about this thing you don't have? So I had to literally train my brain, and we train it exactly like we've seen anything else with the human body, is I had to keep doing it.

I can't build a bicep if I only lift a weight once, then I'm done. I had to do it every day, and I had to create a pattern out of it, even when I wasn't sure it was going to work, and even when I could see no change in my life. I'd say, easily for the first two weeks, I saw no change in my life. Well, I wanted- I'm just sitting there trying to- Well, I wanted...

Oh, go ahead. You, sorry.

I'm just sitting there writing down things I'm grateful for, and my life still feels terrible. I remember breathing hurt. When I was depressed because everything hurt. Everything didn't seem like it was worthwhile.

What kept you kept going?

So that's the thing. I don't get to talk about this much in any of the interviews, so I'd love to talk about this, too, because I think you're going deeper than some of the surface questions we normally get. I think that the habits are what pulled me out of depression. I write my gratitudes. I journal. I do exercise. I I write a two-minute kind note almost every day. I'd say 90 plus % days since my mid-20s. I know that when I don't do those things, it's like when I don't brush my teeth, I get this film in my mouth. That's what I feel like my world looks like when I don't do those habits. Those habits are the way the building blocks for creating happiness. But the turning point for me, which I never get to talk about, the turning point for me in all this was actually not me. My job was to make sure other people didn't get depressed. So I kept trying to be there for other people. I was just supposed to be this paragon of knowing what you were supposed to do in optimism. I kept going deeper and deeper in depression because I knew that there is a dissonance between what I was feeling and what I was showing to the world.

The turning point for me, and what actually got me to try to do those habits, was at the bottom of the depression for me, I turned to my eight closest friends and family and told them that I was going through depression. A couple of these people were my competitors there at Harvard or my peers. I told them I was going through depression. I said, It's genetic. There's nothing you can do. My grandmother, grandparents, it's genetic. I just wanted to tell somebody. But immediately, the groundswell of support was phenomenal. They kept calling me. They emailed me. They met up with me. One woman brought me cupcakes. It's not when I did it to get cupcakes. But as soon as I did that, everything changed. The reason for it was actually a study I found way later in my life. It was a study by these two researchers in Virginia, and they found that if you look at a hill, you need to climb in front of you. If you look at that hill by yourself, your brain shows you a picture of a hill that looks 20 to 30% steeper when you're alone, compared to that hill that you look at of the same height while standing next to someone who you're told is going to climb the hill with you.

I said that in a convoluted way. When you're alone, hills actually look 20 to 30 % steeper to the visual cortex, which is amazing because I thought we have this objective view of the world. That's bad. This is good. This is how tall that mountain is. And what we realized was, it was one of those matrix moments where I realized that the world is not objective, it's subjective. And that hill, those challenges are collapsing and expanding based upon whether or not you think you're radically alone going through this and trying to get out of this, or whether you're with other people. As soon as I did that, as soon as I opened up to other people, that was the turning point, because it was the move from happiness as a self help idea to this recognition that happiness was not an individual sport at all. And suddenly, that hill of overcoming depression in front of me dropped by 20 to 30 %. And they opened up about things they were dealing with. None of them was depression, but it was just challenges they were experiencing And we started creating these meaningful narratives and social bonds that made me want to do the habits because there was something worth doing the habits for.

So it was a combination of habits and social connection and a mindset shift that allowed in that moment to break from this idea that nothing matters and that there's nothing that I can do that matters, and I have to just wait for the world to change.

Well, it makes perfect sense. And it reminds me of the fact that the surgeon general just had that op-ed piece that went viral yesterday about the epidemic of loneliness. In his op-ed piece in the New York Times, he talked about his own struggle with it and how the turning point was him admitting, just like you did, to his family, friends, and to a few colleagues, that he was really struggling with this. It was there checking in on him and them sharing back that they felt disconnected from social groups and from themselves as well after the last three years. That really was the turning point. But I love that you added that research because it is true. When you are down and sad and you feel like a sad sack that nobody wants to hang out with, that's the story you tell yourself. And that story then and the emotions that feel low, make you keep isolating. And it's when you reach out that you change the behavior and you change the narrative. And then that provides a little bit of that intrinsic lift that you need, that maybe there is something I can do. Maybe there is hope.

I want to go a little bit deeper on this because you've been there, and I've been there, and lots of people listening have been there and are there right now. And so when somebody like you come in or I'm sitting here on the mic, it's so easy to be resigned and push everybody away and be like, Well, that's great for you, Sean, but you don't know what I'm going through. And I think this question, Andre, it's actually number three. It's Sharmaine. Let's play Sharmaine's question because I think it's going to help us even go a little bit deeper to provide some hope, Sean, for somebody who's really feeling like I've tried everything? Since my teen years, I've been asking myself, why am I here? What's my purpose? How do I create happiness within myself? I've made so much progress, yet right now I feel lost. I feel like a failure. I feel not good enough. I feel like I'm not a good girl. I feel like I'm not a good enough mom to my daughters. I feel selfish, I feel off course and like I'm not living up to my potential. I've done the work.

I know this is coming from my limiting beliefs, trauma projections that I have taken on as truth. Yet, here I am, feeling lost, alone, and frankly stupid. I do understand the privilege I possess. I practice gratitude. I know I am blessed, and I do a lot of things right.

I don't think I'm depressed.

I'm not completely unhappy. So what the fuck am I? I'm in some goddamn vortex of nirvana and hell. Sean, what pops out of you?

So many things. First of all, how self-aware this person is, right? To be able, in the midst of this, to be able to identify the stages that they've been through, where they are currently, the recognition of the but also feeling like that they don't feel good enough, and that there's more potential. What I kept hearing in my head over and over again is, this sounds like me. This sounds so human. I think we fluctuate all the time between this I've got things going, and then, wow, I certainly don't. If I have a really productive Monday, I get everything done, and I'm super cleaning the house. Tuesday and Wednesday are terrible. I'm exhausted. I don't want to do anything. I I feel like I waste every Tuesday and Wednesday whenever I have an amazing Monday. I think that that's because we swing, right? And I think what our hunger for is... If our hunger is for a mountaintop experience all the time, that we always know that we're loved, that we're always amazing, that we're always beautiful and the smartest person in the room. I think that that's an illusion and a false desire, because I think it's an accurate reflection that we are not living to our potential.

I think that that's true all the time. I think that I could be doing better as a dad. I could be doing better as a husband. I know that when I work really hard at being a great dad, I know I immediately look around at all the people that are doing amazing things at work, and I'm like, whoa, I'm so behind. Then when I do a ton of stuff for work or travel ever, then I'm like, oh, I should be a better dad, right? I swing back and forth between this. And I think what we need are those anchor points in the midst of it. And where those anchor points come from? You had me on the show to join you because I researched this, but I also went to the divinity school before getting into this. So what motivated my beliefs in why positive psychology mattered came from this belief that the story we tell ourselves and the lens to which we view the world changes how we act in it, and where we find our meaning, and where we find that value. I think that those narratives, those belief systems, can answer some of those questions about how can I feel loved even when I'm not achieving my highest or my potential?

I think in the world, that's very difficult, because then we get on Instagram and we know exactly who's doing great, based upon likes, or based upon some quantification, or money can tell you who's doing great and who's not. None of those fill that void. So where those anchor points could come from? I think that they have to come from other people as well. There was a study that came out of Stanford that found that loneliness had nothing to do with actually the number of people within your life. Loneliness was simply the absence of meaning you felt in the relationships with other people and their meaningful impact upon you. That if you weren't doing anything meaningful for other people's lives, then you didn't feel social connection for the people that are around you all the time. And And vice versa. So if that's the case, if meaning is what's driving our levels of happiness, then I think we actually... My grandmother said it. She's like, If you want to be a friend, if you want a friend, you have to be a friend. And I was like, Okay, that's overly simplistic.

Not really, actually.

That's not working out for me. I can't be the girlfriend, right? In that moment, I didn't understand. Now I get it. What we're finding is that when people are experiencing that fluctuation back and forth, I think we're searching for meaning, and people search it in different ways. Religion, and philosophy, and psychology. I think that a lot of the things that we search for don't work out for us, which is why we get to the point where she's talking about where we feel this vortex of, I've got it, I don't have it. Got it, I don't have it. Because we're reaching on to things oftentimes, or illusory, while we're grabbing on to things that are true. My mentor, Talbind Shahar, said that You're never as great as you think you are, and you're never as bad as you think you are. What I loved about that is that meant that there was a middle path in the midst of it. That sometimes when I think I'm a great speaker or whatever it is, then I get humbled very quickly by anything. Or if I think that I'm not doing great, then occasionally I'll get an email and it's like, Hey, this was really important to me.

That middle path was actually the one that I wanted to be in. And it's this recognition and being okay with, I am not at my full potential, but that's okay. And the reason that's okay is because I'm having a meaningful impact upon other people. So that habit that I mentioned of writing a two-minute pause of email, praising or thanking someone else, I found that one to be probably the most helpful of any of the things I've researched, because you can take someone in a socially isolated state with high levels of introversion, and if every day they scan for one new person to write a two-minute pause of email to, they stop on day eight, unless we pay them $15. On day eight, that's when they realize fully that they're not a crazy extrovert with all these friends that they could write to. They're like, I wrote to everyone my favorites list in my mom twice. That's everyone. And then they scan, and they remember, who's that mentor who got me into this job? Or who's that high school teacher that seemed to have some answer to some of those questions that that person was just asking?

Or what about my kid's first grade teacher who transformed my son's life, but I don't talk to them anymore because my kid's in second grade? And you start to see all these people that are in our lives that we're not connecting with. And a two-minute email thanking them or praising them or saying, I've seen how you've been going through breast cancer, and it inspires me that you're able to find happiness in low health when I struggled to find happiness when I seem to have higher health. That those moments, that just brief meaningful act using technology for two minutes, we found that if you do it for 21 days in a row, your social connection score rises up to the top 15% of people worldwide. That's including experts. What we found was that you were lighting up these nodes of meaningful connections on your mental map of social connection. That, I think if you look at the philosophers, I think if you look at religion, I think if you look at psychology, they keep breaking down this idea that you can achieve happiness alone, that you could just figure out your thoughts enough, and then you did it.

You could just maintain your happiness. That happiness and meaning only come from this interplay with the ecosystem with others around us.

I love that. Go ahead. If you're about to talk another study, go for it.

I just could tell one quick study. It's a beautiful one. It's not about humans. You probably heard This one. This was also in the New York Times as well. There was a study where they found all these fireflies. Fireflies everywhere light up individually and randomly in the dark, and that's how they attract a maid. And their success rate per night per bug is 3%, which I'm told is good. But these researchers found on opposite sides of the globe, these two species, one in Southeast Indonesia and one in the smoky mountains of Tennessee that you can take busses out to go see. These fireflies have these neurotransmitters that allow them to all light up and all go dark at the same time, which is beautiful, but not that smart, because we live in a survival of the fittest world. We're told be the fastest, smartest, brightest light shining, otherwise, you'll never be successful. At MIT, they studied these fireflies, and they realized, we just understand how systems work. That when they lit up together seemingly with their competition, the success rate doesn't drop. The success rate goes from 3% to 82% per bug. It's not like one bug does better.

The whole system was doing orders the magnitude better than we thought was possible because as they lit up together, their light became brighter, and it was attracting more and more potential mates than a single light would have been able to do and create these virtuous cycles. We kept seeing the same thing When we looked at humans, we found that the greatest predictor of long term levels of happiness, as you know, one of the greatest predictors is social connection. It's the breadth of the meaning in your social relationships. So it's not something you could figure out in your head, and then you did it, and then you can hold happiness forever. It's about finding a way of lighting up with other people and getting them to light up as well.

So, Sean, what I love about what you just said, especially in response to that question from Charmaine, is that I was listening to her it just tick off one negative, nasty, critical thought after another. I could feel this heaviness. And then all of a sudden it occurred to me, wait a minute. I bet happiness is broken into two things. It is from the neck up, and it's the things that you tell yourself. But it is also, and probably way more important, that you think about the things that you're doing from the neck down. And that's where these habits come in, that if it's all doom and gloom from the neck up, you're not going to feel any motivation, hope, or interest in lighting up with everybody else. But if you can force yourself to start ticking off these simple habits that you recommend, that you practice, that you've researched, and you just highlighted the one of taking and making a two-minute note, just a two-minute note every single day for 21 days, it will have an impact in how you feel, which, of course, will start to shift all that shit you've been saying to yourself, which probably is stuff that you heard your parents say to themselves.

And so what I love about your research is that you're also making it actionable because I think that's part of the problem, that when we feel shitty and we say shitty things to ourselves, we don't take the actions that actually change it.

Yeah. I heard one time I was on a plane, and the woman sitting, I don't know, kiddy corner in her behind me and to the back, she said she was talking to somebody else loudly that she had just met about all these psychological understandings about herself. Like, literally a litany of all the psychological problems that she had. I realized, and she said she had been going to therapy for years, she had this incredible knowledge about herself and understanding where she was. At no point did she ever mention anything she was doing about it. She was talking to a stranger about which was more trauma dumping than actually trying to move forward. But I think there's this moment where I really thought that if I read enough books, that I'd find happiness. I thought that if I read enough books, I'd be smart, and then people would like me. That was completely not true. I think that we take these paths, and I love what you're saying there, is that there's this interplay between the beliefs and the actions that we do. You see the same thing with religion, between this faith It's the things you believe.

But if you say you believe those, but you're not doing any of those, I'm not sure you actually believe these things. That there's got to be a connection between those. What I would say is, in addition to that, is don't try to do it alone. I think that we treat happiness like self-help. I know our books are in self-help sections sometimes. But as soon as we do this on our own, without that friend, without that mentor, without those people that we're doing meaningful acts for, then we get frustrated very very quickly and think we're doing something wrong. And what's wrong is actually the formula. Like, happiness never works out if it's an individual pursuit. I love that. And that's one of those other mindset shifts I think was crucial to find that you can't do enough yoga to force yourself into happiness unless that yoga caused you to be more peaceful with that interaction with your mother-in-law.

That's like happiness applied. I like to play another question. This one, Andrea, is from Pam. So this is a question from a listener So that I think will help us dig deeper into the connection between you and people around you and how they impact your happiness. I'm listening to your podcast now and almost crying. What if your happiness seems centered entirely on that of another? In my case, it's my son. I've heard you're only as happy as your happiest child, and I have one son, and he is not happy. I know he He lives with his face and his phone, and he says he doesn't mind being a loner. I know that he was happiest many years ago when he had a girlfriend who adored him and was very active. Now he's 26 and should be in the prime of his life, and he isn't. And as a result, I feel deeply unhappy. How do I move past this? And how can I help him do the same? At 65 and four years out from breast cancer treatment, I think it's time to find my warm people. And find that happiness again.

I hear that. I mean, I have two kids of my own, and so much of my happiness is built upon them and because of them. And any frustration that I feel is usually because I'm not with them, right? Or when they're hurting, I so wish it was me. So I think that that's unavoidable. I think that love necessitates amounts of pain that we have to buy into. So I think that the fact that there's pain associated with that love should not be the surprising part. I think if this was me saying that, and I feel like that's been me saying that sometimes in my life, we got to hear only a little bit of her story. Her story was her son's story, mostly. Then we heard that she went through breast cancer. I would have loved to hear her story, and yet we're hearing her story as a bit character or as a side narrator of her son's story, which means that our happiness becomes very fragile. So Well, you and I both... In financial groups, they always tell you, Diversify your portfolio. Don't all be in all stocks. Don't be in all bonds. That's my knowledge cliff.

Don't be on all one thing. I think the same thing happens with meaning. I think we see it with people who love their kids. We also see it with workaholics, where they love something and it's meaningful. The work is meaningful and pleasurable, and they're good at it. Then they just do more But the more they do that and they don't do other things, they're slowly taking out other meaningful parts of their life so that their entire meaning portfolio is all in one stock. It's all that sun or it all becomes that work. We don't even know what to do with ourselves when we don't have work to do. That's a workaholic. They get free time, they're like, What do I do? Maybe I'll just have a few more emails, then I'll feel happy again.

Well, that used to be you. I remember when we first met, you had fallen into that trap, and you had to make yourself a promise that whenever you were on a plane, you are going to put your laptop away, and you were going to force yourself to watch a movie because you were starting to see that you loved work so much, and this was me, too, that you hadn't diversified where you got your happiness from. And so I think that's incredible advice. And I also keep thinking about that swinging. So I loved it when you were saying earlier to think about your life and the emotional and the meaning aspect of life as this range. And if you never knew the depths of sadness, you wouldn't ever experience the greatest heights of joy, and that there is always this swing. And when it swings in a direction where you have really uncomfortable feelings, that that is a mentally healthy and a mentally emotional place to be in life at times. And one of the greatest things that I've learned recently, Sean, and it's helped me a lot as a parent, is that it is so important that the people in your life struggle at times, because inside that struggle, is where they learn the lessons, and they have to dig deeper and discover something inside themselves.

It's the hardest thing in the world to see somebody that you love suffering. I had that I've experienced watching my husband's Struggle with Depression, and I could throw every book on the planet at him, every podcast episode at him, but I can't do the work for him. I can just hold space for that. And I think we have to do that for ourselves, that on those days that you feel like shit, you've got to hold space for the fact that you've just swung in the direction of a healthy feeling, and eventually it's going to swing back. And what I like about what you're teaching us, Sean, is that through these habits, and you said a gratitude practice, a journaling practice, exercising every day, taking two minutes to write a note to somebody. These are simple things that leverage all this research. This is the neck down approach as far as I'm concerned, something that has nothing to do with how you feel, but impacts how you feel. That these are things that anybody can do. When you look at the research around happiness, researchers have put happiness into two big categories. One is hedonic happiness.

And hedonic happiness is, am I having fun right now? It's the moment to moment fluctuating experiences that you have. And let's go back to the metaphor. It's like the waves in the ocean. They come and they go. You can jump You can jump in, you can play, you can have fun, and then it's over. And then there is the deeper happiness, the eudemonic happiness, which is the sense of your life having meaning, of you feeling fulfilled and thriving in that life of yours. And it's important for you to understand that happiness has these two buckets, because I think what happens for a lot of us, and this gets to Andrea's question, is that maybe you have one type of happiness. Maybe you're having a lot of fun on the surface, but life doesn't feel very meaningful. Or maybe you're deep in it, but you're not having any fun. And so I We really want to unpack the difference between these two things and why you need both before we jump into the three different ways that you can increase happiness in your life. And so let's go to another question from a listener named Rachael.

Hey, Mel. I absolutely love your podcast and all of your work. I have a very loaded question, and I know a one-size-fits-all answer might not exist, but I wanted to ask anyway. How can I truly How do I be happy? How do I cultivate happiness? I read so many self-help books, read a lot about the effects of childhood trauma. I journal. I try to be conscious of my habitual thoughts and patterns and work to reframe them. I exercise. I'm always listening to inspiring and transformational content like you.

I feel like I do all the things, but I still struggle just to be happy and to feel happy.

I feel very stuck in the same emotions. I really I want to change.

I really want to enjoy my life.

Do you have any advice? Rachael, I so relate to you. And I want to just pass the mic to you listening right now. When Rachel said, I just want to enjoy my life, didn't you get the chills? Didn't you nod along and say, Yeah, I just want to enjoy my life, too? And this is really on my mind because I think that's the point of life, right? To really try to enjoy it. And one of the things that I notice can happen when you are in a period in your life where you're trying to heal, You're investing in yourself, in your personal growth. You mentioned that you're working on trauma. You're trying to dig out of some of the holes maybe that you feel like you fell into. You're trying to change your mindset. That's serious work. That was me for years, too. Here's the problem with having a big healing journey. You're not having any fun. I think about periods of my life when I was going through a lot of change, and I was working on myself, and I was doing everything that you're doing. Every book I picked up was self-help. Everything that I listened to was self-improvement.

I couldn't even remember the last time I read a fiction novel, or I went to a concert, or I went to a party. Everything got so serious because my focus became so serious, and my focus was about improving my life, improving my life, improving my life. And doing the work to change your life, it's important. Doing the work to identify toxic patterns that you have or bad thinking patterns that make you feel like shit. That's super important. But you must also double down on the fun while you're doing the deeper work. And so the first thing that I want you to do is I want you to set an intention that your number one goal this year is to have more fun, to invest in that first category hedonic happiness that researchers say is so important because, yes, it's meaningful. Yes, it's fulfilling to do the hard work to change your life for the better. But changing your life for the better also means that you need more moments of fun in your life. I worry a a lot about this based on what we've all experienced in the past three years. We've all become hermets.

It's hard enough to get yourself out of your house. But the other thing that's happened is if you're not going into work, if you're still working from home, you're also missing out on all of the spontaneous stuff that happens when you bump into people when you're out and about. In fact, I can tell you a story. Just the other night, it was Sunday night. And as a bit of background, my husband and I had gotten some really awful news last week that a very, very close friend of ours suddenly died. Age 47, heart attack, gone. And I had been hauled up in my house ever since hearing the news. I was super sad, feeling down, and I hadn't left the house in days. And so on Sunday, Chris says to me, Mel, I made a 4:30 reservation at the Padel Tennis Courts, which is a form of almost like ping-pong that you can play, like pickle ball in the middle of the winter on these tennis courts outside with some friends. It was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to just curl up on the couch and suck my thumb and feel sad.

And we got into the car, and the entire ride over, I was sitting there thinking, Should I tell Chris I'm pissed that he made this date with this couple to go play paddle? Should I tell him this is the last thing that I want to do? I kept saying to myself, Should I say this? Should I not say it? And then I would say, Don't shit on his parade. Just suck it up. It's going to be okay. We pull up. The sun's starting to go down. It's freezing. I've got a hat on and mittons on, and I'm grumpy, and I don't really want to be there. And then I see our friends, and I felt a little lighter. Do you know it took about five seconds of hitting that ball for me to feel totally different. The truth is, I needed the fun. I needed the laughter. I needed to not be thinking about something so heavy. I needed to see people that I really like. I needed to do something that wasn't that serious, like working on myself or feeling sad or grieving. I needed fun. And getting out on that paddle court, it was fun.

And there's a part of me that is sitting here going, Mel, Are we really having a conversation right now on this podcast about the obvious? That we need to schedule time to have fun? That we need to force ourselves out of our houses? That we need to break this habit of being isolated and lonely? Yeah, we do have to have this conversation, because I don't think you and I have truly grasped the extent to which our day-to-day lives and our happiness has been impacted by these past three years. I mean, even For those of us who really enjoyed that period of lockdown, where we were trapped inside with our families, this new normal, this part of it, where we're back to normal, but we're not, but we're coping, but This situation, the loneliness and isolation, it feels like it's become everybody's new lifestyle. It's our new default. But this isn't just obvious, it's well-researched. Researchers have proven that the The difference between people who are happy and those of us who aren't is that happy people prioritize doing things that make them happy. I know, it's so dumb, but I need the reminder, too. So now let's go back to my analogy about the ocean and the beach and waves and happiness.

And I want you to just imagine that you're sitting on the beach, and those waves are rolling in and they're rolling out and there's a boogie board sitting next to you. At some point, you have to get off the towel and you got to run into that ocean and you got to go play. And the fact is, it just takes one person to get everybody else to go. There's always that one person in a group of people at a beach who stands up first and grabs the boogie board and says, Let's go body surfing. Come on, guys. Let's go into the waves. And thankfully, this past Sunday night, For me, it was Chris. He was that one person. And look, being intentional about enjoying your life, about having fun, particularly during those periods of time where you're grieving, where you are going through something difficult, where life feels heavy, prioritizing fun is critical. But that's just one of the three things that you and I are going to discuss when it comes to getting intentional and amplifying up the 40% of happiness that is within your control right now. And if you're sitting there scratching your head going, Oh, my God, this is so me.

But Mel, I think I forgot how to have fun. Don't worry about it. I've got an entire episode that we did a while back called How to Have More Fun, and I will link to that along with all the studies that we're talking about in the show notes. And so now that you and I have been playing in the waves, and you understand that dragging yourself out of the house, to the beach, off the towel, into the ocean, and forcing yourself to do things that are fun, that that is part of happiness that we cannot escape, you and I are now going to go deeper into the ocean. And we're going to talk about the two other elements that you can tap into to create more happiness in your life right now. And we're going to do that using more questions from fellow listeners of the podcast when we come back. Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins, and you and I are talking about what research says about creating more happiness in your life. We've already talked about the fact that researchers have identified two types of happiness, hedonic happiness and eudemonic happiness, both of which are critical to your overall feelings of happiness.

And we've talked about why getting intentional about having more fun is critical to you feeling happier now. Now we're going to jump into the deeper We're part of happiness, and that is the eudemonic happiness, whether or not your life has meaning. Because when you go through periods of life where life is monotonous, it just feels blah, you're on autopilot, you You're not going to feel that happy. Just ask Jenna. Hey, Mel. My name is Jenna, and my question for you is, how do you truly find happiness in everyday ordinary life? I'm a mom of two boys, and I struggle most days with being as joyful as I was when they were very little. As a mother of three kids who are now young adults, I can relate to what you were saying about how you were joyful when they were little. And I love that you use the word joyful because I want to go back to that metaphor that I introduced at the very beginning of an ocean and thinking about an ocean when you think about happiness. And so to me, when you go to the beach and it's a very, very calm day, there are no waves, there might not even be a cloud in the sky.

Boy, it sure is beautiful. Happiness is like a still ocean on those days. It's your ability to stand in that ocean and feel this state of presence and connectedness and gratitude to simply being in the ocean. I want to come back to something that you also said that I absolutely loved. You used the word ordinary. And the reason why I think it's important for us to focus in on the word ordinary is we often make the mistake of thinking that happiness is this big thing, this big burst, the big wave. And when it comes to the eudemonic happiness, the deeper meaning in your life that creates the sense of happiness and fulfillment, fulfillment for you, I want to flip this perspective because true happiness comes from finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. That's right. True happiness is actually pretty ordinary. And researchers have identified the number one factor in you living a happy life. And it is the most ordinary thing on the planet, which is why most of us miss it. And that's the quality and depth of your relationships. So let's unpack this. The Harvard study of Adult Development is the longest in-depth longitudinal study of human life that's ever been done.

I mean, this has been going on for 84 years and counting. And for those of you super geeks like me out there, this used to be called the Harvard Men's Study. So when you hear people talking about the Harvard Study of Adult Development, that's the new name for this. It now includes three generations of people that they've been studying. The original 724 participants now include 1,300 descendants. How cool is that? Here's the thing about this study. This study followed people through their life, asking them all kinds of questions as people aged. One of the reasons why this study is so profound is because It tracked people as they lived. Most studies have people looking backwards, which means when you look backwards, you often change the details. That's why the Harvard study of Adult Development is so exciting and so accurate, and the most accurate and important study of happiness that's ever been done. Not only because they have so much data and brain imaging scans, but they've also been studying people in real-time, tracking them forward as they're living their Our Lives. Dr. Robert Woldinger is the fourth director of the study, and he and past study leaders have published these amazing findings that you and I can apply to our lives.

These results from the Harvard Men's Study, They've been replicated in five other huge global studies. I'm telling you all this because there's one singular conclusion from all of this data, all of this research, all of these fancy institutions, and it's this. Good relationships keep you happier and healthier. Good relationships make you happier and healthier. The single best decision you can make to improve your health and happiness is to cultivate what researchers call warm relationships. I know what you're thinking, Mel, what the hell are warm relationships? Well, from a clinical standpoint, warm relationships are relationships that don't cause conflict, and you feel positive emotions around the people that you have a warm relationship with. Said in a normal person's way, it's basically people that make you feel warm and fuzzy. That's what warm relationships are. And I want you to stop and think right now. Let's apply the science. If you think about people in your life, I just want you to put two columns in your mind. Who would you put under the column labeled warm? They give you the warm and fuzzies. You get a text from them, you're like, Oh, yeah, okay. You're excited to see them.

You feel energized when you make plans. Now, there's the cold column. These are people that put you on edge. These are people that drain your energy. These are the people that when they call or text you, you're like, bracing for something. I can boil 84 years of research down to one takeaway. You want to be happier? Put all your energy into warm relationships, building them, strengthening them, spending time with those people in the warm column. You do that, you will be a happier you right now. And the second way that you can do that, by the way, prioritizing the warm, is spend less time with people in the cold column. You either need to stop hanging out with them because they're sucking your energy dry, or you got to put some effort into warming them up by forgiving them or reframing how you see them, or working your boundaries so that you're not triggered by them and their negativity doesn't impact your happiness. So keep that visual of a warm and a cold column. And as you meet people in your life, you can immediately feel what they're like. Are they warm? Are they bringing out the fuzzies?

Or are you feeling on edge? Because when it comes to happiness, your happiness right now, not the I'll be when happy, the happiness that truly matters, standing in that deep end of the ocean, the quality of your relationships is truly the most important thing that matters. And I can explain why at an even deeper level. The reason why this matters so much, it is the number one indicator of a happy life. Good, warm relationships, floating in that ocean with your warm buddies, keeping you boiant. The reason why is evolution. See, positive or warm interactions with people, you know what that does that warm, fuzzy feeling, those people in your warm column, they make you feel safe. When you're around those people, you're not on edge, so your body feels safe. And the opposite is true when you're around people that you would put in the cold column Because when you're around negativity, when people trigger you, when they put you on edge, when you feel like you can't be yourself, you're now in a stress response of fight, flight, or freeze. And this response to other people, it's wired in you. Early Homo sapiens survived because their bodies and their brains, they not only encouraged connection, but they also signaled when somebody might be unsafe.

You and I survived because We're social beings. So this is hardwired into us. And here's where it gets interesting. When you feel loneliness, your brain perceives that as life-threatening. And loneliness Unhappiness is not just about physical separation from other people. You can feel very lonely in a crowded room. You can feel lonely in a bad marriage. You can feel lonely in a toxic friendship. And if you're nodding your head right now thinking, Wow, maybe it's not unhappiness. Maybe the core issue for me is I'm lonely. Well, 75% of adults feel moderate to high levels of loneliness. And loneliness is about the quality of your relationships. And I want to tie this back to evolution. Loneliness feels threatening because you're meant to survive in a tribe of people. You're meant to be connected with people that make you feel safe and warm. It's not only part of happiness, this goes down to your mind and body needing protection. And they've even proven that when life is really hard, when it can come at you in full on attack mode, when you're in survival mode, warm connected relationships protect you from the stress of life. So how do you do this?

How do you tap into relationships? It sounds simple, but again, make the column warm and cold, and then call your friend Friends, text them, arrange time to meet them. So when you feel a pang of loneliness, I want you to understand it's an alarm, just like anxiety. It's a signal that you're missing connection Please do not ignore it. You may be surprised to hear that I felt this way for a very long time. I kept saying out loud, I'm not happy. I don't feel fulfilled. But when I dug deep into what was really going on for me, the core issue was loneliness. I was having fun. I was really busy. I was doing meaningful work. But deep down inside, I was really lonely. It may also surprise you to hear that it was during one of the most successful stretches in my career. I was on the road all the time. I was booked nonstop to give speeches. I was working on all kinds of projects with Audible. The business was booming. I was making lots of money. I have never been unhappier because I was lonely. I was traveling so much, chasing success, chasing achievement, going for the next thing, staying busy that I never saw my friends.

I barely saw Chris. I missed out on a ton of time with our daughters while they were in high school. It was just go, go, go. Now, I had a lot of fun on the business trips. I would laugh a lot. I was always traveling with colleagues, so I wasn't alone. And I was having fun in the waves of life. But when you talk about floating in the deep end of the ocean, I was profoundly lonely, and that meant I was profoundly unhappy. And it can be powerful when you admit this to yourself, because when you realize what you're dealing with is loneliness, that helps you identify the issue you need to improve, which is you need to start reaching out to people. We underestimate the impact that simply getting an unexpected text from an old friend can have on you. I mean, think about how amazing it is when you have a birthday and everybody on social media that gets the the notification that it's your birthday, they come out of nowhere and they wish you happy birthday. It's like, that's unbelievable.

It feels so good.

You haven't talked to that person since high school, but it feels good to have somebody just give you a quick comment on your birthday. And so if you're sitting around saying, I'm really lonely, but you're not reaching out, you're not calling people, you're not the one making plans or inviting people over for dinner, guess what? You're going to stay lonely. Because when I really looked in the mirror and said, I'm lonely. I need to do something about this. I never get invited anywhere. I don't see anybody. Well, I wasn't inviting anybody over. I wasn't making any plans. It starts with you. And look, it could be anybody. It could be friends, family, coworkers. All you need to do is identify old relationships or cold relationships or warm relationships where you haven't seen somebody in a long time and reach out. And by the way, it could be old relationships. It could be people you haven't seen in a long time. Just anybody at all that makes you feel warm, start putting energy into talking, texting, commenting, and making plans to see them. And be careful of the cold people, because research shows that spending time with the people in the cold column, it can actually make you feel more lonely.

And it even worsens your health to be around people like that. And so you've got your friend Mel Robin's permission to stop putting energy into draining relationships, because that's only going to make you feel more lonely and spend more time with warm relationships. And that brings me back to Jenna's question, because she mentioned, did you notice that she felt happier when her kids were little? I suspect that when your kids were little, you were probably part of mom groups. You saw young moms all the time, at drop off, at pick up, at playgroup, and you felt like you were part of something. You had more warm relationships in your life. That's a sign that you're just missing connection. I know I said it already, but I can't highlight enough how profound of a difference it can make to simply admit to yourself that you're lonely. That was the turning point for me when I realized a couple of years ago, holy cow, I'm unhappy because I'm profoundly lonely. I don't see Chris enough, so I'm lonely in my marriage. I am lonely in my family because I'm not around, I'm working all the time. I never see my friends.

And so once I said it was loneliness, that was the cause of my unhappiness. I could do something about it. And you want to know the first decision I made? I made a decision that I was going to change my work life, that I was going to get off the road, that Oakley being in high school was like a melting ice cube. And once the time was gone, I was not going to get it back. And so I reorganized my entire career, my entire business. Instead of sitting on a plane, I'm now sitting above my garage talking to you in a microphone so that I can be home. And it took a lot of work. But I'll tell you what, realizing that traveling that much for work was making it hard to cultivate those warm relationships, that was a huge wake-up call. Because on the surface, it looked like I was having a great time. I was in the waves, but I sure as hell wasn't when it came to the deeper stuff. And I know what you're thinking. Well, Mel, at least you have friends to go back to. What if I don't have many friends or many friends?

Well, I would say this. Here's where you can start. Part of warm relationships and happiness is also cultivated by social interactions, the tiny ones you have every single day. Just talk to strangers. This is a great thing to do, by the way. There's a study that was done by the University of Chicago that you have no clue how happy a random social interaction with a stranger can make you. You inflate in your mind that it's going to be messy to talk to other people, but you underestimate the actual benefits of talking to other people. People who talk to strangers on a train or on a plane or at a bus stop or just at a coffee shop, they're much happier after they talk to the stranger, even if they don't think beforehand that they will be. You know who's great at this? My mother. I was just visiting my mom down in Florida, and when I was little, I used to think it was so annoying, but I now admire this about her. Absolutely everywhere we go, my mom talks to everybody. She talks to everybody about everything. She's constantly commenting on, Oh, I like that sweatshirt or, Hey, how are you doing?

Or, Nice day. And people stop and they talk. And next thing you know, they've made a connection, or they're talking about a restaurant recommendation. It's just amazing. And the energy is immediately boosted. And if you're not good at this, Here's a great tip. Always compliment somebody's nails. If somebody is waiting on you or standing in front of you in line or you're sitting next to them, just compliment their nails. If you see somebody reading, ask them what they're reading and if they like it. That's a simple way to compliment somebody, to open up the dialog, and it always boosts the energy. And one of the things that I'm really concerned about, and I've talked a lot about this on the podcast, and I know the researchers at Harvard are concerned about this, too, And that's remote work, everybody being at home. When we're at home, we miss out on these tiny social interactions with coworkers, with the barista, with the lady at the checkout counter, with the guy that you always see at the grocery store, with the customers that you're used to seeing come into the store. These tiny social interactions go a long way to making you feel warm.

So bottom line, relationships, relationships, relationships. Talk to that stranger in line, push yourself to reach out to people. Text somebody every single day. And don't forget your family. You put family on the back burner, don't you? Because you think they're always going to be there. Make an effort. There's a lot of people in your family, maybe even cousins you haven't seen in a while, that you have a warm relationship with. I'm prioritizing happiness, which means I'm prioritizing the relationships in my life. But you got to push yourself, okay? Let's make ourselves a promise that we're both going to do this because you got the research and you now know why it matters. So what are some of the practices? Because you're a little bit further ahead on the road, like You represent what I refer to often on this podcast as you're a light on the path from.

So what are some of the practices that you have? To put down the sword.

To put down the sword. How do you recognize what your version of the sword is?

I think, number one, just recognizing that there is a sword and it can be put down. Just like what you're saying right now, pat yourself on the back, and I'm not kidding. Do it right now. Pat yourself on the back for knowing that this is a good development for you. Even if you walk away from it for three months, three years, this knowing is the start of something really awesome in your life.

So number one. Have you named yours? Because I've named mine the Campaign of Misery.

I love that. I might adopt that. No, I didn't name that, but the campaign of misery sums it up pretty nicely. It totally is. One thing I started doing, journaling was a very big part of my practice. I would journal every day about this for a very long time. Then I would burn it. I would literally put it outside in a Pyrex bowl and burn it. And then I would watch it burn. It didn't take that long.

Every day?

Every day. So you would wake up? I have pictures on my phone. So you would wake up? I would take a picture of the burning flame every day.

We have to put... First of all, we're going to put this card in the description in the show notes.

Can you walk us through this? I would burn it. So I would do my morning pages, three pages of... Morning pages is just supposed to be three pages of your stream of consciousness. But I would purposely think about this tribal thinking and just write every Everything that I hated about it, everything I loved about it, everything that was happening in my life. For three pages, I would write about it. I would crumple it up or rip it or whatever. I would put it in this pyrex bowl so I didn't explode it, and I would put it outside.

So would you walk out to your front porch or were you on the back deck?

Back deck, yeah. And just put it out there, and I would burn it. And I would close the sliding glass door, and I would watch it burn.

From the inside safety.

Yeah, from the inside safety. Sometimes the wind would take it, and I would be like, Good. See you. Goodbye. Every molecule of that paper that burned was one breath of that old language leaving me. And so what I would do next was the most powerful thing for me. I would go to the sink and I would wash my hands up to my elbows every day. And that act of cleansing myself from whatever I didn't want that just came out of me.

You know the image I just got? What? So my dad's an orthopedic surgeon. Yes. And I think about the way in which a doctor washes their hands before and after surgery. Yeah. And I just got this image of my dad washing his hands all the way up to the elbows. Yeah. And the ceremonial and scientific nature of cleansing like that. Yes. And then it had this direct reference for me, since he's a surgeon, of the sword and surgery. Yeah. And actually deliberately doing surgery to extract at a subconscious level this emotional language, this campaign of misery.

That was my intention to extract that and not have that be a part of me.

I'm going to do this. Love it.

I love that I was raised in a family that taught me how to do this. It helps me be so empathetic and compassionate towards other people.

Yeah.

And now I feel like enough. I am very fluent in it. Thank you very much. Not anymore. I don't need it anymore. Not anymore.

Not anymore. And then another thing-Can I just ask one more question? Because I know I think that for those of us that don't have a practice of writing three pages, can we freestyle and come up with a prompt? Because I do think having everybody that wants to try this call this the campaign of misery. Yeah. I liked that you said what you love about it, what you don't like about it. So So can we just think up a prompt? So as I go to do this tomorrow morning-I got a great prompt for you.

Give me the prompt. What is the prompt? This is what I write on the top of every page every morning. Okay. This will change your life. How can this be easy?

How can this be easy?

I write that on the top. Jesus.

I don't even know what it's. What is this? What questions you have? I'm like, this.

What is this? Is that my day?

Is that everything? Because with the sword and the subconscious language that everything is hard. It's so hard. We make our lives so hard. You wake up, you have joy. Let's not do that. Let's not do that emotion. Let's make it hard.

What is coming up for you? Because Jessie is with her gorgeous blue eyes. What is coming up?

You're right.

Make it hard.

Everything is so hard.

It has to be. How do you make your... Give us an example of how you made your life hard already today. Where were the disgusting thoughts? The campaign of misery. How did you pick up the sword against yourself?

Oh, as soon as I get in the mirror. What do you do? You look like shit. Good luck today. Not even good luck. Really? Oh, yeah.

What else did you say to yourself?

I get obviously super stressed and emotional with holidays because my family has never really cared about them. And I'm trying to change that. So that's also like, how can I create my own language for my holiday? In my new house with my new husband, all these things that I can start fresh. How do I do that with nothing, from scratch? What does that even mean? What does it look like? Jim asked me that, too. What does it look like to have a tradition? What tradition? We can do it. Name it. And I'm like, I don't know. I don't have. I don't have any. Is it like a certain dish? Is it a certain reef that we hang? That makes it hard.

How could it be easy? I just got what this means.

And it goes back to like, it's a campaign of misery, but mine comes from a victimhood, if that's even a word. I know. That's a big campaign. My second language that I've been nurtured in, bathed in, of like, you're a victim. You're a victim, victim, victim. Not me, but that's what I will be like, oh, yeah, mom, you are.

You are a victim.

Yeah, of course. You're the only one. So that is under the umbrella of the campaign of Misery. But you're right. Everything can be easy.

That is our natural state.

I've never thought of it that way because it's always like, oh, God, I have to do this, this, this, this. Make sure that gets done. No, it doesn't. It doesn't.

It's so funny that we're talking What did you get?

What did you get, Mel? What are you getting?

Jesus. I was yesterday running around like a freaking lunatic.

It's the day before the day before. It's lunatic season. Yeah.

Because we're in a new house. Yeah. And I feel the same way. Like, what are my traditions? What are this? I'm the same. And we have plenty growing up. I just like, what are mine? And so then I'm buying fake faux, whatever the held, things that go across your fireplace. And then I'm buying the little white trees that light up. And I'm like, do I even like these? I put them up on the thing, and I'm like, I don't know what to do. And then it's just garbage. Yeah. Yes. I'm like, why? And then I'm sitting there today and I'm like, we need a wreath. We need a reef. We need a big wreath. The big wreath thing. It's got a- Totally.

The tradition of stress and worry. Getting it right. Not enough and never be satisfied. That's an awesome tradition. But I invite you to just bake cookies instead. Yeah, I know. Hey, listen, I'm not saying like- And here's what's interesting, everybody.

I want to keep coming back to these two languages because the language that might have been spoken was joyous and happy and all this other stuff, whereas emotionally, the language was, this is hard.

The emotional language.

This has to be perfect.

Everything was always hard.

This is stressful. Families are a pain in the ass. You deal with yours. I'll deal with just...

Holidays are women killers. Sending you up for success all day long with that statement and all the other ones, too.

How can this be easy?

How can this be easy?

But I don't have an answer.

Yeah, but what if your answer is it can't?

Listen, Listen, it's not about answering that question. It's about training your subconscious mind to look for a different answer to a different question. When you are working on the subconscious level, you have to have a different thought. You have to introduce a different thought into your being. That's why you like Oracle cards. That's why people like-Guided meditation, people like prayer, people like devotionals, It's because it introduces a different thought. A different thought. So when you are working on this level and you're realizing this is ingrained in me, this is not just a quick fix. I can't go to a seminar or I've been to a bunch of workshops. Is the 33rd workshop going to be the answer? I don't know.

No, because you sit and listen and you have an epiphany, but you don't do the work to encode. You don't do the surgery to cut out this shit.

Exactly.

And you don't have to burn it on your deck every day.

I want to burn it on my deck. But the thing is, when you I write this, I have written this on the top of my journal for five years, maybe.

Is that when you started doing this?

You want to know funny? The campaign of misery inside me is already coming up going, I don't like the question.

Of course you don't.

Yeah. Maybe we should go, How can today be easy? Maybe I should write, No, it's got to be spot the campaign of misery.

Make this a little bit- And I look at that and I'm like, That's hard to fill up three pages. I don't know if I can do it.

You know what we're going to do?

It's super easy. I think we should ask Jessie to just silently write And then when she's done, we're going to burn it. And we're going to see how it feels.

Are you down?

I'm so happy for you if you take on this.

Yes. And I've got a pirate tears.

Good.

It doesn't have any of the holiday shit in it yet because You know what? I made it hard. I'm not even starting it. All right. So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to give Jessie a notebook.

Okay.

And I have another question about this prompt, too. Yes.

She don't like it either.

No.

Well, it's stressing me out because I'm like, oh, do I just need to make a to-do list? I'm If I have to do this, how can I make it? I still have to do this a to-do list. But do you just shorten the to-do list instead of 10 things, combine it into three, or is it- It's so funny.

I sit here and I'm like, you're making it hard.

I'm just analyzing. Yeah.

Go ahead. Coach, Ramy.

But you do the same.

Am I focusing this around Thanksgiving? I still don't know what this is. Do we make it? Is it work? Is it personal? Is it today being Wednesday? Is it just focus on the weather? I don't know.

I get that. It It seems very overwhelming when you look at this because this is very confronting, because it's not how we were raised. It is not our natural language. How can this be easy? That is a very difficult question. And if it is, it's time to dig in. Here's what I will tell you. How can this be easy? Notice how your mind searches for, This is wrong. I can't do I won't do this well enough. I don't have the right resources, the instructions, all of that. Notice how your mind is searching for that. Yes. That's it. Just notice that. You can write three pages of Amy She's a complete jack. She has no idea what she's talking about. I don't know what. Write all of that. That is what I invite you to write. That stream of consciousness is really helpful. It still gets your mind thinking about how this can be easy. Part of the morning page's ritual is to get out all the crap, right? You've got a golden Buddha underneath a foot of hardened shit on the outside. So we're getting through that hardened shit and getting to the golden Buddha.

The hardened shit is what you're writing on the page.

Or the golden Buddha.

Or the golden Buddha. It could be. I find more golden Buddha nowadays after doing this practice for however long I've been doing it. But It's okay to get the shit on the page. It's okay to not get it right. It's okay to not understand it. It's okay to just be in that in between. But your courage and your bravery to be in the in between gets you closer to creating a new language for yourself. A love language, a language of acceptance. I mean, a language of possibility, a language of inspiration. That is all what I was searching for when I was doing this. I will tell you, it has brought me there. There is even more. There is no finish line here. It's like just this glorious marathon where everybody's high-fiving you all day long. You know what I mean? It's just fantastic. It will bring you there. But you have to be willing to stay in that space of, This isn't going to work. I don't know if this is going to work because that will keep you grounded, at least in the possibility that it might work.

Yeah. And I think it's overwhelming. The more I just listen to it, the more I'm like, actually, you're going to fill that shit up real fast. You will fill that shit up. It's scary, though, of what could come out. It's totally scary.

And that's why you burn it. That's why you're like, you know what? I'm glad I don't have this.

Because you keep that down there. That's what my sword is laying on top of. We don't touch it. And no one looks at that. No Nobody can look at that.

Don't go that direction. And that's okay. And nobody will. And that's fine. You're doing this for you.

I love this.

You're doing this for you.

Well, we're going to go to a break. Yeah. And Jessie's going to write her three pages. Yeah. And then we're going to come back. We're going to burn this motherfucker.

Let's do it.

How can we turn inward and start to hear this little voice and then do the deeper work to follow that thread to what the weight may be that you can process from your past to free yourself?

I think the starting place is always just a curiosity about ourselves. And a lot of times, just as a person doesn't want to go look at the trauma, why do I want to go look at that thing that makes me nervous? That works very strongly against our curiosity about ourselves. And if We are free to be curious about ourselves. It's not dangerous or threatening to be curious about ourselves. There's so much that we can learn. So just an example can be, what does myself talk like? What do I say to myself in quiet moments? What do I say to myself if I do something wrong? What do I say to myself if I drop something? What do I say to myself if I approach a new social situation or a new challenge? So we become curious about what... We can become curious about what is going on inside of us. And now we start to put words to things. And sometimes we can do that. We can do it sometimes just by thinking, but what we think and go over and over again, sometimes in our mind, without being super productive, it's not always like that.

But when we put it outside of us, it's different, which is why if we're talking to someone, that can make a difference. A trusted other about, Hey, I was thinking about, I'm saying this to myself over and over. I realized this has been going on in me for years. Can Can we say that to someone else? Or can we write it? Writing it down, journaling can make a big difference in that way. And the talking to another person can involve a therapist. I think if someone is having, of course, thoughts that they don't want to be alive anymore or thoughts that start to be quite severe, then that person should get help because we want to understand and make sure that we're maintaining safety. There is a place where professional help is important and is needed in In many situations, say it's not to that level of severity where it's needed for safety, but it can dramatically help us inquire with ourselves. There's another person who's trained to help us introspect, to help us inquire about ourselves, which is why I go to therapy. I don't miss therapy unless there's no choice about it. I'm out of town.

I just simply have no two ways because even though I can help other people do this as a trained therapist, I can't do it for myself. When people think, I can do some of it for myself. I can introspect, I can think about myself talk, I can write, but I can't do for myself what someone outside of me can do. Because I lack the impartial perspective of self. I'm impacted by what's going on inside of me as I'm trying to think about what's going on inside of me. So thinking, writing, or the therapy process can help us understand ourselves so much better. And the change rides on the back of understanding. We're trying to polish the hood instead of looking underneath at the engine. I believe that we are capable of understanding ourselves so much better than we do. Now, the world collaborates with the shame in us and the fear that says, Oh, just look the other way. It's really the opposite of what leads us to health, which is part of why you and I are talking about it today, a part of why it's so important.

Well, and it's also I want to take a highlighter and make sure that as you were listening to Dr. Conti, you had two, maybe three super important takeaways from what he just said. Number one, that just thinking about this can sometimes lead to you spinning in circles. And so there's an enormous benefit to you getting those thoughts out of your mind and onto paper or speak them out into the world. The second thing that you said is if you can have access to therapy, that's a fantastic thing because just like the example that I gave earlier when I was saying, our daughter was telling herself, I'm never going to find anybody, and I'm not this, and why does everybody, and I'm not good-looking, and I'm not that, and I'm not the other thing, that when you're outside and you're objective, you have this perspective that the person that's living with this little voice doesn't have. And so there's something beautiful about It's speaking it out of your mouth so that you can now analyze with somebody else. But you also said something, and you wrote about this in your book, and I think it's super important, that just talking about it with a friend or a loved one and having somebody that you feel safe with, that you can share your experiences with, that it normalizes it.

It makes you feel that sense of relief, and that can be be helpful to somebody if you can't afford to go to a therapist. And so don't do this on your own, because talking to a friend or a loved one about the little voice in your head and how you see the dots starting to connect can provide you the insight and self-awareness that you really deserve.

Yes, absolutely.

Is there anything else that you would add to that?

Well, I think we can get perspectives from outside of us. Imagine in the example where you're citing your daughter saying, No one wants to talk to me or I'm not good enough or attractive enough. And let's imagine when a person If a person feels that way, we can very rapidly start making self-fulfilling prophecy without being aware of it. So someone who feels that way is often diffident. Their head is down. They're behaving in ways that may make them much, much less approachable approachable. Then no one does approach them, and then they find confirmatory evidence that they're not good enough, and then they're looking down more next time, they're more avoided next time. And this can get people into places that can, at times, be hard to get out or get out of or to understand, because we're often not aware of how what's going on inside of here affects how we present ourselves in the world around us. That person who keeps having a negative experience with But with a boss over and over and over again may not realize that they're inadvertently fostering exactly that. They're behaving in certain ways that are diffident, that are avoidant.

And then there's a repetition. So we can look across life situations, but we're not necessarily the best at observing ourselves of, how am I in the world? And I mean, how many times have I heard a person say, no one wants to talk to me, or I'm not good enough, or I'm not attractive enough, or this or that? And then when you get a little bit more information, oh, since that break up two months ago, every time they go out, they're like this. And their friends see that, but maybe people haven't talked about it. And a lot of times that's the case where people around When I haven't talked to someone about something that's very clearly evident. And if we start being more curious about ourselves, talking to trusted people around us, it's remarkable how much we can learn about ourselves. Someone who will tell me that they feel very ashamed of themselves. They've done something terrible, but they have been assaulted. The example that you gave, which happened throughout life, and you would say, Well, what might you say to another person? Or there's another person coming in who was sleeping when they were assaulted.

Can you stay around and tell them just how awful they are? It's a way of getting out of ourselves because we make ourselves special in ways that are not good for us. Don't make yourself special in ways that are not good. If If anyone else would be off the hook for something, or gosh, we would have sympathy and compassion, we want to bolster that person. Why am I the exception? We can look at ourselves through a fair and equitable lens if we come at it that way. That's the basic premise behind it, but that's part of the premise of inquiry in therapy. Also what it is like if we're just talking to someone trusted around us is, I don't want to go tell someone Here's my story of why I'm so bad. But like, Here's a story of how I can really think that, and that can go over and over again in my head. If I'm curious about it, boy, that conversation is likely to go well because I'll learn from me while I'm talking. If I'm talking to you, boy, I'll probably learn from you, too. I'll open up also for you to talk to me.

Maybe then you talk to me about yourself, and that's good for you. There are ways that we can, through trust, exhausted communication and communication in the service of understanding and helping, we can be so much help to one another in ways that we just often aren't. Often not because we don't want to be, but because the opportunities aren't there for it. Nobody raises something. It's just not talked about. It doesn't have to be like that.

When you start to identify that little voice and the weight that it's tied to, how do you train your mind to default to something else?

There's a lot of answers to that, potential answers, depending upon the person, their underlying mental health, what that thing is, how pervasive it may or may not be in their lives. Is it reflection? Is it writing? Is it a therapy process? There's a lot of answers to that, and often the answers also include behavioral change. If I think I'm a loser because I'm not healthy enough, some aspect The effect of that is behavioral change is realizing I can get myself out of bed 20 minutes earlier and go for a walk around the block. I can do that. Then getting myself to do that, which then bolsters me. There's behavioral change and there's what goes on inside. But I think an important thing, an extremely important thing to say about the question you asked, is that when something has been with us for a long time, it doesn't change overnight, because we are also creatures of habit. I give this example a lot, that if you and I we just chose a word and we decided, let's choose a word and say it a thousand times, then you'll be thinking about it this evening. I'll be thinking about it this evening, too.

If we'd say it 5,000 times, it'll be on our minds in two days. We have to understand that these negative pathways, they will atrophy. They can and will atrophy over time, but they don't go away all at once. Because we live in a world that often wants rapid gratification and a medical system that is like, no matter what's going on with you in many scenarios, you get 10 sessions of a certain therapy and everyone's supposed to be better afterwards. This drive towards rapid gratification and these expectations that we're just supposed to be able to change things, I think, also come from how the mental health systems that allegedly are treating us and often don't do a good job of it, approach us, create a sense of disappointment of, Why am I still thinking that after I've already been through three weeks of therapy about it? Well, the answer might be because you've been thinking about it for seven months or seven years, or in some cases, seven decades. We have to have a framing that's realistic because it may be that a 20% change in the frequency of saying that negative thing to oneself over a couple of months might be an amazing achievement.

That achievement is leading towards that thing going away. But we get so impatient, and we don't have a framing of, What should this require of me? How long should this take? What are these neuronal mechanisms that are forces of habit that guide so much of what goes on inside of us that can be changed, but not rapidly? I think, again, understanding is of such importance and having rational expectations. I very often will want people to understand we can change this. But it's going to take us... I'm not sure. I might say it's probably going to be in the 4-6 month range. We can really get our arms around this and I want and hope that things can We start improving a couple of weeks down the road. But it's a several month process. Let the person know that because so often there's just a reflex that says, Hey, somebody threw a medicine at you. That medicine is supposed to make you better. Let alone if it's a couple of therapy sessions, and that's supposed to make a person better. We need a rational framing for what's going on inside of us and to plot out how do we actually get to change.

Well, I think that's good news. I do think it's good news. Yeah, because if you have a level of patience that you bring to this process, you're giving it room to work. And I will share personally that even just identifying the fact that this was a reflexive habit of mine to tell myself someone's mad at me, even just identifying it like, Oh, there it is again. Oh, interesting. Oh, wow. There it How could the person in front of me in the line at the coffee shop be mad at me? I haven't said anything outstanding. You know what I'm saying? Like, just, Oh, there it is again. And so the process alone of starting to see this is rewarding in and of itself.

I think I want to highlight when we talk about having the courage to look at ourselves and how hard it is. You think about the example that you gave, you could have felt about feeling bad. Why am I feeling this way? I wake up and no one says, I feel this way, or am I saying feeling bad things about them that my husband would feel that way about me? Think about how many ways you could just feel bad about that and have shut it down. It takes courage and curiosity to not do that. I just think that part is so important to emphasize, and that we can start doing that. We can start feeling better, doing better, emboldening ourselves just by doing small, nice things for ourselves and for other people. It may sound trite, but it is not. A good hand, say if you're in that line to the coffee shop and somebody dropped something, to pick it up for them or to give them a smile or do something nicer for ourselves because we often self-punish. If I don't feel bad about myself, I'll just walk that distance in the rain instead of putting an umbrella up.

We do a lot of these things ourselves where we could just, in the moment, just in the moment Just be nicer to ourselves, more considerate to ourselves and to others. That starts empowering and emboldening us to do that, to see there's enough good in me that I can give somebody a smile, I can give somebody a helping hand, or I can even be a little nicer to myself. It may sound small or trite, but I promise that it is not. It's often that that gets the ball rolling towards something maybe more difficult, like looking at something that I know is on my mind a lot, but I've been scared to look at. I think we can start in simple way, simple goodness to self and others.

That example of putting an umbrella up was so poignant because I think of how many times I've had an umbrella and I've just been like, No, it's okay. I carry the umbrella, I walk a couple of blocks, I pop my collar, I start to hunch down, and I take the drops. And that moment where you stop and put up the umbrella, it is important. I keep thinking about this visual of the raindrops being like the negative beat down. Yeah, I like that. And the act of popping up the umbrella as a way to just Have yourself not have to hear it.

Yeah. I really do love that because sometimes we'll say, I'm the hell with it. But the idea, I get the umbrella out, but to hell with it. No, no, that's actually to hell with me.

Yeah.

We want to stop and think, if I'm thinking, to hell with it, what am I really thinking? To hell with me, I'm not worth getting the umbrella out. It's awareness. I know I'm going to stop and I'm going to do that. I'm not going to say, to hell with it, to hell with me. I'm going to make some protection, make You make a little bit more pleasantness or anything positive for myself. I love that way. Then the umbrella is shielding us from the negativity because we've had the wearwithal inside of ourselves to do something small but meaningful for ourselves. I think that's a powerful way to move that example forward. I like that.

It's beautiful. Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, by God, please subscribe because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe.