Unlocking Happiness For A Healthy, Higher Performing Work & Life

And learning from them because you can't possibly have true empathy until you've heard it from them.

And so,

That was really a very humbling experience.

Well,

As humble as you.

So,

Let me say welcome everybody.

Let's kick it off.

Actually,

We were talking about in Mexico,

The focus was happiness at school and how to build happier schools.

But actually for teachers,

That's work,

Right?

Yes,

It applies.

So,

Today's focus is about unlocking happiness at work.

And nobody else in the world can talk about this topic,

Jennifer.

So,

We are so lucky having you here.

We call these webinars the journey to the agora.

So,

We are getting ready for March next year.

With this world happiness agora,

Virtually,

We are going to be connecting from,

We already have more than 30 locations around the world.

You are part of it.

You are curating many of the segments.

So,

Today we are going to focus on work.

And you have the wisdom and you have the data.

So,

What are we going to learn?

What's new?

And what are you going to share with us?

Well,

I'm hopefully going to debunk some myths around happiness and debunk some myths around happiness at work.

And that grownups deserve to be happy too.

We focus a lot on building up other people,

But we need to put the proverbial masks on ourselves to be able to really service other people.

So,

That's going to be my big goal is to get people feeling like they need to take better care of themselves.

And they are doing a pretty crappy job of it so far.

Okay,

So when we begin.

Sure.

So I'm going to lead everyone through my PowerPoint because as you know,

Luis,

I love visuals and I love my presentations,

I think,

I think that's a really good way to make them a little bit more fun.

I'll try to do that this time around.

So I'm going to talk about happiness at work.

The fact that we spend so much time there.

We spend about 10 hours.

So massive time that we're investing in work and yet 13% of the global workforce.

Only 30% of the global workforce is is happy is engaged at work.

And this is across thousands of data points 10s hundreds of thousands of data points,

Then that Gallup puts together every year when they look at the state of happiness at work.

And they're like this,

They're ready to get the heck out of Dodge,

We found that people are literally cool,

Checking out at at 239pm is what researchers quantified the exact time that we're starting to check out were mentally exhausted.

And one of the things that we've learned actually in most recent research as PwC has decided price Waterhouse Cooper's has decided to make hours no longer an expectation of your job.

So you do not have to come in at nine to five.

This is a bold move.

And it is because when you start to look at the the real data.

It's not our goals,

Not ours that are important to to really seeing successful organizations thrive.

And yet we're very stuck in old ways,

We have a hard time inside inside of the workforce and employers and in corporations across this entire globe.

We just keep marching in the same way that we've been marching and unfortunately engagement doesn't change.

And so these big,

You know,

Usual suspects like Google and and PwC now or LinkedIn,

Zappos where they're really making huge changes around this thinking.

And it's why they are attracting the most successful and talented people and it's why they've hit the trillion dollar market,

Say Apple and Google where you're seeing these organizations that are Amazon sorry,

But these organizations that attract the best people and they're doing all these new ways of thinking about the workplace.

That's why they're the most successful.

So we need to start looking at these giants and in our every,

You know,

In our everyday lives we need to start looking at that in small companies organizations and think,

What are they doing right.

And so that's,

That's the topic of today is figuring out how we can get more people to leave work on Friday,

Feeling excited and energized and ready for Monday.

And it's important for us to think about sort of why we give up our happiness and what my story is and so I'm going to just share briefly but our story,

And the reason why I'm in front of you the reason why I'm doing this webinar why I'm so passionately excited about this is because of a personal reason and when you talk to leaders actually and people who are quite committed and purpose driven,

It tends to be some sort of catalyst in their life that drives them to make these decisions about pursuing something bigger than themselves.

And my catalyst moment happened in 2009 when my husband who is there as you see him sort of jamming a stick down on that poor man number 26 there.

He was a pro lacrosse player he played pro hockey and then moved on to pro lacrosse here he's playing in the World Cup,

Representing Canada.

They had lost to the US for 20 years finally,

Finally one.

And that's him right there he's peak physical condition,

And within,

You know,

Several months he after he was playing at that level he contracted West Nile swine flu and then Guillain-Barre syndrome.

And that was very dangerous,

Very scary.

And what happened was when he ended up at the hospital.

They were having the sign,

Do not resuscitate they were not sorry not necessarily like,

You know,

Planning for that but they were talking about worst case scenario,

And,

And so I had to prepare for worst case scenario.

That's when you get forms that you have to sign and it's quite scary.

Jim was an athlete,

And his mindset was just different than most other people's in that moment he really didn't have fear in the same way that I did.

I,

We had a two and a half year old boy we had a,

We were pregnant,

And I joke that it's never we were pregnant it's actually always I am pregnant women do not share that burden with their spouses.

But we were expecting and when you're confronted with something that's scary,

What happens is you reset.

And what I learned is that Jim had a ton of psychological fitness training he had years of being able to reset in the middle of a situation like,

You know,

In the final goal of a game or a seven game series where it's the last minute and you're,

You know,

Down by one or you're up by one and you lose I mean there's lots of situations that can remind you that the world keeps going on even if you feel devastated in the moment.

And this is what helped him to really focus on rebuilding after learning that he was.

He was very sick.

Then the doctors informed him that the treatment that they provided him would work and then he was going to be able to live through this which was obviously such a blessing and wonderful news.

But then they informed him that he might not walk again.

And as an athlete who was a pro athlete in two sports this was something that was a complete identity,

It would be like telling you know a musician who had been playing the piano for their whole lives that their fingers would no longer work.

And there's a lot of a lot of pain that's associated when you lose your identity,

And your happiness is quite connected to that feeling of mastery,

As we know.

So,

When he was told that he wouldn't walk again this is when Jim said,

Screw that,

And that he was going to fight it,

And that he would look at walking as a gold medal winning opportunity and so this is Jim here relearning to walk,

He had to have these special shoes and,

You know,

He was held up.

That was one of his physical therapists that was holding him as he was walking.

And it was a process he had to relearn how to brush his teeth right at the beginning relearn everything.

And that was,

That was a challenge but for Jim it was like a comeback,

You know,

He was going to make this succeed and what happened was he walked out of that hospital after six weeks,

Much to the doctors,

And all of his support systems surprise.

And the reason why they were so surprised is that,

Yeah,

He was a 30 year old male with all of these reasons why he should be,

Why he should be able to walk out of that hospital because he had,

You know,

So much expertise around him,

But they really did not expect at the level of severity of his illness that he was going to be able to do that.

And they really did bring it back to mindset.

And he had started practicing gratitude immediately because that's what the research told them to do to have the mental acuity and stability and,

And I guess just the the fortitude that would be required outside of all of those other tangibles like physical therapists and occupational therapists the intangible was attitude and Jim took that on he looked at his attitude as being part of his ability to perform.

And often we don't look at that part of our,

Our ability to perform as being so connected to as an athlete for example so connected to the psychological,

We look at sports psychology Yes,

That plays into it,

But so much of what we look up to in the world is based on,

You know,

Physical prowess,

And we spend a lot of time working out,

Looking at the level of strength that our muscles,

You know can how they can come together to lift weights as being some level of success and we work on running and our physical fitness is just so important,

And I get that.

But when it really comes down to you being able to be high performing as an athlete and your physical success is tied to your mental health.

So,

Jim walking out of the hospital after.

Six weeks decided that he was going to work on his psychological fitness as a priority.

He never had a comeback and that was one of the things that Jim really didn't did struggle with is that the comeback came as far as he could go which was learning to have a new life without being an athlete.

And there was a point where that was really hard for him,

And extremely devastating what he needed to do is re learn how to use his tools again,

And that was really his psychological fitness tools.

So what we found when we started to do the research was this contagion effect of happiness and it's based on framing and heart surgery,

Or sorry the premium heart study,

Where they looked at heart health is contagious,

And this was,

You know,

40,

000 people who were in the hospital,

And they looked at a person,

And the people around them and how they impacted their healthiness and heart health was a byproduct but what we now know about optimism is that optimism is a is a huge.

It's usually correlated to healthier people.

And so,

When Christakis,

Who is a Yale professor came to sort of understand what was happening and framing him he wanted to look at that deeper and so in 2008 he started to look at this contagion effect or network of happiness which is optimism which would definitely be part of the heart study,

Did they know more about psychological fitness at the time when of this study when it started.

So when you see that happy person there what Christakis did is he looked at the ego which is the person in the middle,

And then all these alters around that ego,

He looked at 18 different people in our lives.

So,

Example,

A it would be me.

And then they would look at 18 people in my life that contribute or detract from my happiness but they would ask questions of the people that I work with ask questions of my neighbors of the siblings and neighbors could be people across the street and right next to me,

My siblings my spouse,

My friends,

And they determined that the happier the people were that were proximal to me so close to me,

It would make me happier.

So the happy person of a friend lives close to you and is happy that makes you 25% happier sibling 14% happier,

A neighbor 34% happier.

And I joke that only a spouse can make you moderately 8% happier,

Which I know in your case,

Luis is not true,

It's more like 95% happier So,

So really,

This goes to show though that it's about actually connecting with people in person.

So that is a very important part and when we look at the workplace.

So much of what we find great about the workplace,

Or alternatively not so great about the workplace is how the people in our proximity or in our space actually impact or happiness so the happier you are around people at work,

The more likely you are to have an impact and the more likely you are to have an impact and the more likely you are to have an impact and the more likely you are to have an impact.

So how do we compare that,

Again conversely could be negative.

So when you start to look at these other social contagions,

Diabetes,

Alcohol assumption,

And so on,

It becomes networked,

It becomes contagious.

And so when you see in,

For example,

In students or in schools or in universities what we found when one person committed suicide you see a rash of suicides which is extremely dangerous but happiness is a very important part of the workplace.

So,

You know,

We need to be thinking about how do we create this network effect how are we going to make this so that at work,

We can have not only more positive experiences ourselves,

But create positive experiences which is,

You know,

Better sales,

Better financial outcomes for the powers that that care about that.

But the win is for us,

You know where we have a better experience and other person,

Other people get better experiences so I'm going to give you a kind of a video here that describes which I love,

Which describes why we mimic each other's behaviors and why this network effect occurs and I'm sharing this with you because I think the science is really important,

And one of the.

I mean this is a non scientific video which I'm setting up here for you,

But the reason why I want people to understand that this matters at work,

And why this matters in general,

Is that it isn't just fluffy.

It's not nice to have any more.

It's really evidence based that we need to start teaching the science and teaching the evidence and showing the outcomes,

Because that is how we are going to convince people that bringing these types of concepts inside of the room are going to be the reason that they're adopted.

And until we,

We focus on this evidence based piece.

It's never going to be adopted.

So as I say that,

Let's watch this non scientific example of why we mimic other people's behaviors.

The gentleman in the elevator now is a candidate star,

These folks who are entering the man with a white shirt the lady with a trench coat.

And then subsequently,

One other member of our staff will face the rear.

And you'll see how this man.

This individual.

Excuse for turning just a little bit.

Once again,

Here's the candidate subject.

Here comes the camera state,

Three of them at least.

And this man has apparently been in.

Now,

Is a fellow in the elevator.

First he makes a full turn to the rear,

Charlie closes.

A moment later,

Open the door,

Everybody's changed positions.

No pressure for some good.

Okay,

So why do we,

Why do we do that.

Like I said,

Non scientific example but there are reasons for it and it's an evolutionary hangover essentially we want to belong to a tribe,

We still want to belong to a tribe,

We're happiest and have the longest life spans when we have people that are close to us around us that make us feel psychologically safe and supported.

So,

We do that without even thinking about it,

We,

We behave like other people are neurons mirror each other so that we can create that symbiosis that synchronicity.

And it's almost.

Well,

It is definitely subconscious that we do that but we we do make choices to and we can make choices that aren't just subconscious.

And it's because our brains are lazy,

We have to create these heuristics these patterns that are deeply embedded in our genetic code just so that we can survive,

And that we are just completely maxed out.

What I find so fascinating when you start to look at the brains of people today is that they are frazzled,

Because we have so many more choices.

We have so many more expectations at work we have new shifts in our emotional and psychological development that are that are happening so rapidly that we can't handle it,

Our brains literally are feeling overwhelmed.

And so,

A big part of what that mirroring piece,

And the fact that it is an evolutionary hangover of thousands and thousands of years is quite alarming when we think of how fast,

Everything is happening right now,

And our brains are saying,

This is too fast,

We don't really know how to handle this information in the way that it's being handled.

So what we need to do is,

Is combat some of that by bringing back what is important about humanity again.

And then we need to move on to the next slide,

Which is the desire pass through the work of our development of psychological fitness,

Which can be a prophylactic to some of the stress.

So,

As I say,

If we have a genetic hangover from thousands and thousands of years ago,

Our parents are going to play a role still in what they're passing down from their experiences and what is really interesting is that experiences do get passed down,

Both from the parent and positive upbringing,

As we all know,

All of these play out in what we pass down to our children.

There's this aspect of the outside circumstances so the social and society or social expectations like the job and the,

You know,

Status of the world,

All those other things that we really put up on a pedestal in our lives are actually only 10% of what our happiness is,

And it's not sustainable it's,

It's really what is on this researchers call this hedonic treadmill where we're constantly trying to access it and yet it just immediately when we have hold of it,

It disappears.

I liken happiness to fog,

In that we know that it is around us,

And we see it,

But when you try to hold on to it.

It's not just when you're standing inside of it,

Unless you're highly aware of those moments of joy.

You can see it.

And then there's this intentional activity which is that psychological fitness that I told you about and which is the theme.

It is intentional activity.

That is,

You know,

Our habits that become our behaviors,

And we need to be working that out every single day intentionally.

We need neuro plasticity which is one of the things that I spent so much time in the company that I'm co founder of his plasticity labs based on the idea of plasticity neuro plasticity and our ability to wire and rewire.

You want to be able to,

You know,

Take the fact that our brain is processing these 11 million pieces of information per second.

If we can only attend to 40.

What are those 40 things that we need to attend to at any one time especially now when we have multitasking is a whole new concept that didn't even exist before.

So if we're trying to just process these 40 pieces.

If we can build into our unconscious behavior,

More of a hopeful reaction or cognitive empathy or cognitive gratitude or mindfulness if we work those out.

So that in every time we speak.

It's being filtered through that unconscious thinking,

Then that makes it so that we are now empaths,

And that we were grateful by nature instead of actually practicing in consciously in the moment.

It takes that load off of our brain,

Which is very helpful.

And as a leader when you think about a person coming into your office.

You're often meeting those people were they are highly emotional.

If you can be readied for those opportunities to talk to an employee in an emotional state.

Wouldn't you rather be able to access mindfulness subconsciously or gratitude or empathy subconsciously.

And so if you have to practice it in the moment that that's when you're in your rational brain is having to process what's happening.

You tend to not always go there if you haven't practiced it before.

And this is really why in leadership,

We need to be building empathetic leaders optimistic leaders grateful leaders.

And also look at neuroplasticity there are bright sides and dark sides.

It's like any habit that you build you can build,

You can wire your brain to build bad habits and you can wire your brain to build good habits.

So,

Again,

This is where I go back to choice,

We have choice,

Always,

Because we have that 40% that is malleable.

And if we work it out,

Then we can really focus on the those bright sides of neuroplasticity.

And then the fight or flight is also a big problem that crops up today in the workplace.

When you,

You know,

We look at again and evolutionary hangover of that fight or flight it was because we needed to protect our food and our families or ourselves from being in very short lifespans and mostly because we were going to be eaten by wild animals and or diseases or anything I mean you could get,

You could get a cut,

And you could die from it because there was just not modern medicine,

So we do have a state of fight or flight what happens in that amygdala,

When we are managing fight or flight,

Is it just shuts that part of the brain off so that we can protect ourselves,

Because we need to be able to sort of act with this almost this innate response to danger,

And that part of our brain where creativity and innovation live isn't necessary to our brain in those moments of fear.

So,

That's when it shuts down.

Unfortunately,

We don't have those same those same types of stressors,

But that fight or flight response is still very much in play.

You see it when you look at,

You know,

People in the workplace when you have sort of 30% of people are 30% of our brain being shut off it's like losing 30% of your workplace.

If you imagine Coke,

And they had 30% of their trucks down.

Would you imagine that they would look into into that they'd fix that as fast as possible would have Starbucks at 30% of their store shut would Starbucks not manage that or look into it because 30% of their stores were shut down.

Well,

We don't as leaders tend to really understand what that means as a detriment to our staff when 30% of their brains are shut down.

And you're losing when you really look at at human capital as being the most expensive part of what an employer pays when they want to care about that more than their trucks more than their stores they should be caring about their people actually losing a lot of their performance.

And what actually happens to is because that brain part of the brain is mapped on to innovation and creativity,

You're losing the most of your,

You're losing your knowledge base workers which is when we look into the workplace sector knowledge base workers are going to be the most important part of our workforce demographic.

We are seeing more AI taking over the automated piece,

We need to be thinking about who is most important,

Or what is most important inside our organizations,

And we need to be thinking about who is most important,

And we need to be thinking about who is most important,

And we need to be thinking about who is most important.

And if 30% of their brains are being shut down we're losing people.

You lose a significant amount of their ability to perform.

So you imagine that's the same inside of workplaces,

You're,

You're missing out on your human capital when we're in the state of fighter flight,

What is really interesting there's a great book Susan Cain wrote it it's called quiet.

And what she's done is she's analyzed places where there's high levels of stress.

And one of them is the open concept workplace.

When you bring extroverts and introverts together into one place and it's all in an open space,

It's actually horrible.

And it was really based on Herman Miller,

Wanting to sell more office furniture.

And so this whole concept of the open office was created on a trend.

And now it's part of everybody's workplace we think that's where collaboration exists and that's completely and entirely untrue.

So Susan Cain is now now working with Steelcase to develop workplaces,

Where we aren't all jammed in together,

Where there's quiet spaces for introverts,

And there's quiet spaces for extroverts that feel like they need to have time to get away.

We're not necessarily finding that those things that were part of what were hugely reviewed and looked at as being consequential to the workplace as being the most productive way to inhabit a space,

We've actually found that that's the complete opposite.

So when we start to look at things like the nine to five and analyze that and like I mentioned about PwC,

The reason why we're analyzing these old ways of thinking is because we just embarked on them,

And we assimilated them as how it was supposed to be without any fundamental research on the happiness and the performance and the emotional state of our people.

It's only been in the last few years that we've really started to look at outcomes based on the decisions we've made inside of the workplace.

When I show the stat,

People often laugh or cry.

But what is interesting about this stat is that right now we're actually in a low point in our happiness in our lives,

Ages between 30 and 60.

So for all of you on this webinar that are between the ages of 30 and 60,

It isn't sort of a downward spiral.

There is this huge upswing that happens as we go into our later years.

And a big part of that is that we are in an environment right now when you look at 13% of the workplace being engaged,

Is that work isn't naturally making us happy,

And that's a big problem.

It's something that I am compelled to fix.

Happiness is very,

Is something that is a byproduct of work when we love our work.

If you look at Martin Seligman's PERMA,

P for positive relationships or positive language,

Sorry,

E is for engagement,

R is for relationships,

M is for meaning,

And A is for accomplishment.

Martin Seligman,

For those of you who most of you probably know who they are,

If you're on this talk,

But if not,

He was the former head of the American Psychology Association and really developed this concept of positive psychology to get people thinking about why,

You know,

Why am I constantly reacting to illness instead?

Why am I constantly focusing on developing my own health and being proactive?

But when you really look at people who are the happiest,

Which are the people that demonstrate this high level of PERMA,

Look at the E,

Engagement,

R,

Relationships happen at work,

M,

Meaning you get from work,

A,

Accomplishment you get from work.

The four out of the five are directly tied to what we do every single day and what sort of accomplishment we're going to get.

So if we're unhappy in the workplace,

No wonder we're feeling low at this time of our lives when we're spending so many of our waking hours there.

Our brains like to feel like they're accomplishing something every day and so happiness at work is extremely important to our sense of accomplishment in life and our ability to be happy and for us to maybe change that upswing there for it to sort of plateau maybe more around the 30s and 40s and not dip so low.

And then I'm still very happy to see that at 70 we're in a peak.

There were quite a few people that came after the talk in Mexico saying,

I am so glad that I'm on the upswing and I really feel like I am.

And I think maybe it's because I stopped caring what people think.

So maybe we should do a little bit more of that now.

One of the things that are making and I'm going to talk a little bit about what's making us stressed out.

I'm sure you can relate to this this breaking news disorder which is a new petition to be added to the DSM five which I think is very interesting.

You know when you see here in a White House dog arrives in spring as the the breaking news during Obama's 10 here.

Obviously we have a lot more breaking news and with a bit more dire consequences these days and this isn't supposed to be sort of a partisan partisan like political discussion here it's just more that the news in general is adding so much more impact and negative impact in our lives and yet we can't seem to pull away from it.

A big part of that is that we have a strong negativity bias,

And it was,

It'd be worthwhile to look into some of that research,

But basically we we do have a negativity bias it's part of again our genetic hangover that we have to create a state of awareness of negative things so that we can protect ourselves,

But we don't have those same insecurities today but our brains still behave in the same way.

So it's why we can't turn off CNN,

Or why we can't,

You know,

Keep our heads out of the news or off our phones looking at these headlines,

But it's having a dramatic effect on our hope on our hopefulness,

And so we need to be working on that.

And some of the other things that are happening as parents we have a feel like we need to curate our children's lives.

Many of us are parents,

Working parents,

And we have pressures that are different than before.

We feel like our children need to speak 17 languages that they need to learn 400 different instruments that they need to also get A's in school.

And then we also need to do that while juggling our lives,

And then we need to feed them,

You know kale gluten free desserts made of dirt,

And we need to feel like everything that we're doing is wrong.

And that's a problem.

My,

My mom tells me all the time that she feels badly for mothers and fathers right now because they know too much.

Maybe it was better if they just didn't know as much and didn't feel as compelled to have to make their children perfect because really,

Right now we're actually supposed to protect our children in this time of their lives as being sort of protected.

Children should be children,

And we've forgotten how to do that and as parents it's causing us a huge,

Huge amount of stress,

And it's almost impossible to juggle.

We also have this new impact of technology where we're,

You know,

Constantly in our phones,

We're constantly focused on the wrong things,

Like having dinner time together when you start to look at the stats around spending dinner with your children will be more impactful on their,

And a better predictor of whether they will graduate.

If you spend time with your child,

Having dinner together,

Three to four nights a week,

They are 50% more likely to graduate.

And that's how impactful spending time eating together is,

And that is dinner technology free.

So,

Put those phones away,

Put your TV away and sit for 15 minutes with your child,

And you will have a bigger impact on their lives,

Then pretty much anything else you can do.

And when you start to look at what we're facing this,

These stats are quite unbelievable.

One of the things that I,

I do like to note is this Tinder or whatever the dating app that is being used 416,

000 swipes left or right in one minute.

And that's obviously growing,

But what that why that's so important to include that is,

It's really important to note that we create relationships with people is that it's basing it on very not,

It's definitely not deep in the way that we're making those decisions about who we're going to marry who we're going to date,

We're falling in love with.

And so,

That superficial way of thinking about people has dangerous implications.

And so,

What used to occur over years of writing letters to each other can now be decided in a swipe left or right.

And so,

We need to be thinking about how we're going to,

You know,

How we build that into our own lives and ways for us to be thinking about creating relationships that are in person.

I keep saying let's go back to grandma's rules in the workplace.

And so,

As we analyze that as a,

As a leader,

We're bringing young people in that have a completely different way of thinking about feedback,

The feedback expectation and the loop between manager and employee is extremely fast,

Much faster than it ever was.

And so,

As we're thinking about what it's going to be like,

You know,

Year 2025 in the workplace.

And so,

As a leader,

Sometimes you didn't even have access to the CEO,

Often you didn't.

You had your direct supervisor,

And you had a door shut,

You didn't walk into the office.

There wasn't the same expectation of feedback in,

In for sure in the way that I was professionally raised,

But now as a leader,

I know that feedback expectation is so fast,

You have Slack as,

And these other tools that you use constantly where someone is sending you a message in an instant message,

You're expected to reply within two minutes,

Or there's frustration is what they've determined in the research so two minute replies make us as leaders,

Not just managing our own individual contributions,

But we have to be constantly thinking about what we're doing,

And so there has to be ways that we use our tools like out of offices,

Like setting up boundaries in our calendars to be able to protect ourselves from that time.

So we don't burn out.

And we also have to lay very strict expectations on our employees that if I don't answer in two minutes,

That's okay,

It doesn't mean that you're doing a bad job.

We have to use technology to protect ourselves from technology,

Which is the true irony and all of this.

Another big issue is that loneliness feeling because we are replacing relationships with technology not augmenting them.

That's something that we need to contend with,

And it's happening in our older workforce.

And so,

And I futurist believe that we're going to have more retirement,

Instead of retirement.

This term retirement,

Is that those who are looking to retire are going to actually return to work,

Because loneliness.

It creates a problem,

And it creates depression.

And so,

Or corporate corporations and leaders inside those corporations are going to have to start to think about what that means to extending the opportunities for those who are looking to return to work.

They have a huge value,

And I know people aren't just forced out into retirement,

And most people want to continue working if they enjoy their jobs.

So we have to plan for that,

And what that,

What is that going to look like in the workforce of those boomers that we expect to retire they might not be retiring.

So what helps us to be happier.

Well,

We have to look at these traits,

The hero traits.

They're what we've defined,

And other researchers for decades have been analyzing.

How do we cluster them together in our research and our work over the last seven years.

So hero is based in psychological capital which is hope,

Efficacy resilience,

Optimism and these four traits cluster together really what in the workforce you want to have in high demand,

Because they are more likely to produce the highest levels of outcomes that are,

You know,

Important to the CFO and the CEO,

Like shareholder returns sales customer experience scores,

NPS retention productivity engagement.

And then when you look at the gem piece the gratitude empathy mindfulness.

That's actually what creates your most successful leaders,

Those are the ones that you should be looking to put into leadership roles because they actually identify as being very constructive to the leadership development.

So,

Hero,

Really,

Those metrics based psychological capital,

Look at those as those traits that lead to that and then Jen is not really what I want to call the softer side but those are the pieces that really develop the person on us on a social emotional level,

And are great for leadership development.

So how do we build those simple actions complex benefits.

I say this a lot,

I want to everyone to repeat it simple actions complex benefits.

And that's why I,

It's important to understand this is that we want to think that our activities that we engage in,

Have to be really complex.

And that's if they're the more complex you know the more rigor that was put into the scientific analysis,

And therefore they're not necessarily successful.

That's absolutely not true.

The more simple they are the easier we can assimilate them and adopt them,

The more likely that they'll become a habit,

The more likely that that habit will become a behavior,

The more likely that they'll become a subconscious way of acting in the brain,

And then it makes us be able to attend to those other things that we need to do in our job as leaders.

So simple actions complex benefits.

It's this concept of couch to 5k I use this example because it's something that I would love to use more,

But it's really that when you are not super physically healthy,

You might not have a lot of lung capacity that's going to get you to run a 5k,

You don't just run a 5k tomorrow,

I know I couldn't.

If I was dead,

I would probably choke in the first kilometer and fall over to the side with a gut pain.

So,

When it comes to our psychological fitness.

We have to follow the same example which means we start by walking more,

And then walking leads to jogging,

Jogging leads to running and then eventually someone can run that 5k and then typically when someone can run a 5k they're interested in mastering the 10k,

Or the half marathon,

The marathon,

And then you become a triathlete.

So that's the goal here in developing our psychological fitness to become a sort of a beginner and Iron Man in our psychological fitness,

It's going to require every day training focused training.

So,

When I look at hope,

Let's build let's think about hope for example,

Hope is not about wishful thinking it's about pathways and agencies,

And I'm sure that you would have had that explained to you in positive psychology 101 is essentially hope is about creating the goals and the motivation to get to those goals.

So,

It's not I wish I could have a new car I wish I have that new job I wish I could have that promotion it's,

I am going to get that promotion by setting up small goals that will give me the opportunity to get in front of my boss and ask so that and shows that I'm successful in that,

And that he will or she will give me the promotion based on performance at work,

And here is the plan,

And I'm going to create a plan a and a plan B and a plan Z to get there.

That is how hope is built.

So hope is really fit sort of in that place in the front of the brain because we tend to filter what we see through hope,

Which is part of our humanity and a beautiful thing.

This is growing research now that I would suggest you look into it's very interesting Chinese scientists are really trying to understand why it fits there,

And why we have so much hope and why it can be,

It can be a benefit in a curse hope.

Sometimes it can make us feel compelled to do more work,

And it helps us to build those pathways and agencies,

And then sometimes that feeling of hopelessness can be extremely detrimental to our motivation.

And so I really want to focus on that.

This research is quite compelling to and it really did take into account,

A whole bunch of different factors but and it looked at a whole bunch of different fields that students were engaged in.

And so I think that was actually a better predictor of whether someone would graduate,

Then their GPA or their ACT entrance exams that 12 item measure of hope is a better predictor of success than anything else that those students were tested on,

Which goes to show that maybe not what we should be looking at,

Again,

We should be throwing things to the wind and trying new ways of experimenting so I always say,

If you want to be to hope start with a small goal in the morning,

Make your bed,

You should watch the TEDx talk by the military guy I'm blanking on his name but he wrote a book,

You know,

Make your bed,

Essentially,

And.

And what he said was that if you make your bed in the morning.

It's something you've completed immediately to start your day and then by the end of the day you get home to a made bed and remember that you had actually completed a goal.

There's all these reasons why you want to create again neuroplasticity so simple,

But you do the,

You do the action,

You recognize that you've done the action,

You congratulate yourself mentally for it,

And then at the end of the day it's reinforced think about how many times that feeling of hope has been wired and rewired in the brain,

And you do that every day.

Imagine what that's like in a month or a year or two years from now.

And then also efficacy,

Making sure you believe in yourself is very important.

We tend to in the workplace,

Feel like we have to hover.

We as parents do that but in the workplace,

We create prescriptions for people and then want them to execute on it.

And when they don't execute on it then we slap their hands.

That's a terrible way to lead,

What we need to be doing is setting people up to fall over,

Try fail,

Learn,

Explain what they're learning,

Try again,

Not worry so much have protected budget around the failing.

We really need to create failing budgets.

Instead of looking at as losing money on some sort of project that we tried as the reason to kibosh it or to end it,

It should be that that was a win.

You know,

Google has a stand up every month where they have someone share their biggest failure and they get to do it.

And that's how we should be leading our organizations.

And how are we for time,

Luis?

Are we good for time?

Okay,

Good.

So we can play this video which I absolutely love so we're going to play it.

Okay.

Okay.

So what I love about that video and Luis you know I just,

I absolutely love it because it just shows what happens when you set someone up for success,

And you believe in them,

And they that look on that child's face of gratitude and self efficacy and resiliency and pride.

When we create prescriptions for employees and do not let them have that experience.

We are taking away so much from their joy and happiness of being at work,

And then when they do get that success that allows them to be even more entrepreneurial and be more innovative because they have psychological safety.

And when you start to look at the biggest organizations that have done all the research Google is a great example of Project Aristotle,

Four years they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars doing analytics to find out who made the highest performing teams looked at 180 of them,

The top performing teams demonstrated the highest level of psychological safety,

And which came out of turn taking in meetings,

So not having one person on the team,

But having one person on the team,

And then emotional sensitivity so psychological safety like risk taking.

And that is why we have autonomous cars that's why we have Gmail.

That's why we have all of the most in search.

That's why we have the most incredible things that Google has developed for us,

Because they let people take turns and meetings,

And they let them jump on top of that stool over and over and over and over and over again.

And so we have to take the lessons from that and make sure that we just allow people to fail that's one of the most important messages I would say,

Especially with this younger workforce that is critical to them.

And if we don't provide that to them they will leave gratitude,

Obviously very important.

People need to look at work what they have versus what they don't have,

Especially in any place that is under resourced.

And make sure that people are focusing on building their gratitude,

Because when you start looking around at all the things you don't have which every organization has a lot of things that they don't have.

You can be at the happiest company and you're,

If you're a person that lacks gratitude,

You're going to constantly be looking at things that you don't have,

But you can be in the most under resourced low paying job and feel gratitude for what you do,

And it dramatically increases the spirit of the workplace.

And so you as a leader need to be practicing it when you look at the science,

Dr.

Emmons wrote this great book thanks we shouldn't have everyone read it,

Basically looked at these 192 participants over 10 weeks,

Broke them out in clusters and those folks that practice gratitude for 10 weeks had these huge health benefits slept longer,

Lower blood pressure,

Stronger immune systems.

And these are all not just,

You know that they felt less lonely and we're more forgiving all very important pieces to workplace.

You want to be able to be a forgiving person when you're frustrated inside of a meeting or you're angry with your boss,

But um,

But there's an impact on our health,

Which is extremely important and when you're starting to look at bottom line for those who have lower blood pressure,

Lower glucose and CFOs,

People that have stronger immune systems lower blood pressure and sleep longer and better,

They're more productive they're more engaged they don't live on disability they don't have,

You know,

Health issues there's not the same sort of presenteeism or absenteeism.

So again,

All these benefits are monetary and they're also wins for us as individuals and leaders.

So,

What are we going to do and since we don't have a huge amount of time,

I get people to start the practice which is sending an email,

So send an email to someone and say thank you,

Or text or WhatsApp or Facebook whatever you use,

Use tech for good,

And then start doing it as a habit by making it part of your everyday life,

Thanking people,

Simply by writing on a post it note,

What you're grateful for and put it on their desk or their computer when you walk by in the morning,

Create a wall.

So,

That's really important simple actions complex benefits resiliency is really great again,

You know,

This huge amount of time but I think we have enough time to play Dr.

Tversky because he's about the stress,

And how we have to look at stress.

Okay.

And I think it's an important thing because many people have told me from my lectures,

The one thing they remember.

Okay.

I was in the dentist office and looked at an article that said,

How do lobsters grow.

I don't care how lobsters grow.

But I was interested in it.

And then points out that a lobster is a soft,

Mushy animal that lives inside of a rigid shell that rigid shell does not expand.

Well how can the lobster grow.

Well,

As the lobster grows that shell becomes very confining and the lobster feels itself under pressure and uncomfortable.

It goes under a rock formation to protect itself from predatory fish casts off the shell and produces into one.

Eventually,

That shall becomes very uncomfortable as it grows the right back under the rocks.

And the lobster repeats this numerous times,

The stimulus for the lobster to be able to grow,

Is that it feels uncomfortable.

Now,

If lobsters had doctors,

They would never grow,

Because as soon as the lobster feels uncomfortable goes to the doctor gets a valiant gets a Percocet feels fine,

Never kept off the shelf.

So I think that we have to realize that we have to realize that times of stress are also times that are signals for growth,

And if we use adversity properly,

We can grow through adversity.

And adversity is one of the things that I think we,

We don't connect to happiness in the same way that we should happiness is not the absence of stress or negative feelings happiness is about emo diversity,

Really great researcher out of Harvard,

Who looks at this concept of emo diversity and you really need to embrace pain at times to be able to embrace happiness.

And when we,

We make people feel like happiness is about being joyful all the time.

And we need to be of service to those people because authentic happiness is not constant sort of irrational joy.

It's about dealing with real life,

Which is our life that has lots of complications and stresses,

As I listed through probably only a fraction of the people that we deal with I mean I have lots of conversations around grief and mastering or managing through grief.

There's tons of things that we need to be really understanding that are going to impact us death of parents and death of loved ones and so even just having a baby or several children and trying to be a working parent is extremely stressful there's so many things that I haven't even touched on.

So the idea that we can't be happy through that,

Because we have stress is is wrong.

And so we need to work on that inside the workplace to optimism.

Again,

Leaders who are optimistic tend to be more liked.

They tend to be able to pull more from their team.

I mean it's these are obvious things but,

But really it has to come out in the language we use,

You know,

We have to start thinking about what we're saying and create a network effect or contagion effect with our language inside of the workplace because if you want to be treated with respect,

And you wanted to be a manager that really has a lot of influence your language will be extremely important to that to you being successful in that role.

So I would,

You know,

Obviously happiness habits I keep talking about these pieces of the,

The,

The component of sort of an eventual state of perma to get to perma means you have to work on it every day,

You know,

People don't just have perma people don't just have that state of happiness and what Martin Sullivan is sort of defined and then now expanded on as he's done more research but part of what you,

You know,

You want to see that as a goal,

But they're the way to get there is through practicing habits and at work it's just saying thanks.

Make sure you're thankful and thank your boss to their rarely thanked,

Make them feel like they're not on an island,

And then do that weekly,

Set a calendar reminder,

A Siri to send you a reminder every week on Fridays.

So,

Mindfulness.

One of those other key habits that we need to build.

Here's our mind right now and in our current society,

Trying to contend with all of the things that I just suggested are stressors.

And one of the things that we can contend with that and combat stress is by actually spending time listening to silence to taking times for ourselves to be quiet.

We don't get enough quiet.

And so,

When you're listening to your family or you tend to leave your family or you tend to leave sort of the chaos of one part of your life,

You go right into the chaos of another part of your life where you turn on the radio and you listen to the news or,

And then you go from that place and to work where you immediately start working at communicating with people or you have a stand up and I know for sure inside of the tech world,

It's super fast paced.

And so,

When you think about your new product every two weeks or ship code every two weeks.

I mean when you think about that level of expectation that's happening in some of our biggest organizations inside the world,

What are they doing to manage that a lot of companies are setting up rooms where you just have quiet rooms,

Nap rooms,

Dreaming rooms.

And so,

It's a very difficult space to have quiet.

And that literally is two minutes a day,

You do not have to be a yogi.

I mean,

Obviously meditation and yoga and all those other components to our wellness are important,

But if you just take a time out,

That can be enough for a while until you start building up your capacity.

And there's a reason for that really I mean many of you know probably know this but one of the reasons why mindfulness is so important inside the workplace is that it helps you to manage an irrational response to peers to coach a co workers to your boss to the people that you are employing.

If you can get better and meeting people where they're at,

Which means you can be more empathetic because you have a more mindful brain.

And if that means taking two minutes of listening to silence so that you can have a better relationship with your boss and your peers.

That's not only going to do,

You know,

Be great for you as a leader,

But that's going to be really great for you as an employee,

Because that allows you to have a rational response,

When you potentially are feeling frustrated,

Or when your ideas are being met with negative responses,

Or if you lose an account.

What if you're a person that's on the phone every single day,

Dealing with people that are rational and angry with you.

Imagine all of those people that are at call centers.

If you can create your,

Your ability to handle an irrational person better you're going to have way better success.

So,

Work on your mindful brain.

And remember to,

Again,

Simple actions complex benefits I'll say it again.

It's not silly.

It was not so you know you can still be responsible and have fun.

And that's what's really important when we,

We talked to a lot of corporate executives,

They are so afraid of being silly or being interpreted as silly but when we do the research we found that the more human you are the more authentic you are as a leader,

The more fun you have with your employees,

The more liked you are more successful your employees are there's a that's an old fashioned idea that you need to be removed or inaccessible or stoic put sticky notes on a wall and see what happens and see what you learn about what motivates the people that are posting them.

And remember to give yourself a break in your piece doesn't happen in a day,

You are on a couch.

Still,

If you haven't ever practice any of this,

If you still are running a 5k you can always run a marathon,

You can always get to be an Iron Man or an Iron Woman.

And so,

If you practice it habits really do help you to reach your goals,

And it's also about what our habits,

They're things that you do every day,

Right,

Those are habits that's a good thing.

As long as you're building the right habits and and then also when you think about that positivity piece.

We need to be reminded that our and value our stress and acknowledge the stress and acknowledge our feelings we should not feel guilt for feeling sad,

But there are times when we could be better about what we bring to the office,

What we bring to our peers.

Is it,

You know when when I talk,

One of my favorite sort of mantras or mottos is this concept of when you're speaking have your words pass through three gates.

Is it necessary.

Is it truthful,

And is it kind.

So if you think about those three pieces when you're in the workplace is it necessary could mean,

You know that frustrating guy that was honking at me and yelling at me when I was driving because I,

You know,

Pulled in front of him or someone pulled in front of me and was frustrated.

Is that worth me going into the office is it necessary for me to go into the office and tell everyone about how crappy my morning was isn't it's not necessary.

What is necessary is going in and making sure that that person who might be dealing with a child that kept them awake all night,

Or a death of a loved one or putting their parents in a home or dealing with a crisis at home doesn't have an additional added stress,

Because of your frustration so we have to be able to share with each other,

But let's start thinking about that is it necessary is it truthful is it kind,

And I think we'll have a better experience at work.

And then remember to laugh.

I always say to laugh.

I won't play this last video because I don't think we have time right,

Luis so um,

But the laughter pieces quite a nice way to.

Yes,

Again,

Take your cues from children,

They know how to live.

Ready.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So,

I'm leaving you with this and I saw there's some questions I don't know if I can,

It's okay for me to answer them but I leave you with this because it's my reframing photo,

And it doesn't ever change.

I mean,

I don't let them grow up in my mind this is exactly how I'm going to remember them forever whenever I need it,

Even when they're old and and grown up and married themselves but when I think about how you know how my life has turned out since that moment where we were signing forms and they said Jim couldn't walk.

It turned out to be the most incredible experience like Dr.

Torski said,

You know,

Sometimes of pain is real grow.

And it's really how you choose to accept it here,

You're sort of your life mission should you choose to accept it should be that you,

You figure out how to embrace it.

And that doesn't mean that I didn't have lots of tears and lots of pain and there is stress and fear.

What could I make out of this so I could have a post traumatic growth moment versus a post traumatic stress moment and,

And this is,

We all have that choice we all have the choice to say can I do I want to be a victim of my memories or do I want to be the success of those memories and,

And,

And the star of my memory and I think this is where in the workplace where we do tend to fixate on things that are inconsequential really because the next day we we tend to completely forget about them.

And then the big things we can make into something really special.

So try to find your reframing moment,

A priming image or something that you can go to in your mind when you're having those first world problem days and reflect on it,

And then that helps you go into work and be the positive contagion the positive network effect that will dramatically impact you know the success and the happiness and the joy of the people around you and then,

And then also for the people that matter,

It will,

You know,

Make a more successful and financially viable and,

And,

You know,

Better outcomes for the business side too.

Wow.

Well done.

I think one of the most that you really want to talk,

And so much behind so much science so much wisdom,

But it's about you,

Is about your authenticity is about your,

Your family's James and so on is just spectacular so congratulations.

I love the work,

It makes it so easy.

I mean it's this is so fun.

We're talking about happiness for the last hour.

I mean,

Really got a great gig.

I don't have much time for for questions,

But I think that maybe we can go for one or two,

Is that okay.

Yes,

Sure.

I think I think the question is,

Is it possible to change the name of a person because they are not in HR yet a lot and even the,

The idea of HR is they're looking at changing the name and thinking about it as,

You know,

Sort of people leadership or because they're,

They're,

They're,

They're,

They're not,

They're not doing things that are leading the well being charge.

And when I go into organizations,

They have maybe a person doing half time,

Developing well being strategies.

I mean,

This is a big part of why I need to be and why you and I focus so much on educating senior leaders about the benefits of this work is that it then add resources to human resources on the well being front,

So you're not just,

It's not a sideshow well being.

And I think we,

A big part of what we have to do is do these interventions and figure out any way to hack data mapping of them so you spend three weeks or a month working on gratitude show as well as you can that productivity and engagement is increased and present that to your boss,

And somehow they perk up.

But right now it still is that good feeling or good to have but not necessary to have.

As soon as it becomes necessary to have,

Then we can start implementing more effort around well being and that's when then human resources stops being looked at as transactional,

Where you're just,

You know,

Getting your benefits claims or you're getting,

You know,

Brought into the office and walked around and showed where you work and people look to HR for these sort of again Trent very transactional relationship where once they get to be more strategic and it's focused on the welfare of humans.

That's when we really bring back the humanity to HR.

That's a great answer.

Well being conscious of time,

I think that probably we can,

We can keep the conversation on Facebook or just go to the be learning how to be community on teachable.

I think that we have many opportunities to go through I think that what I would really suggest is that you get the book,

We get your book,

You will have it,

A go through it.

There are so many tapes.

And I think that would you manage to get with the whole hero GM,

A methodology is something that is has almost all the ingredients as part of the formula.

So I think that I really love it and I would invite everybody to go and get the book and go deeper into the presentation.

So useful.

And so thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you,

Lisa I always love talking to you and I'm,

I'm happy if you know there's an opportunity I'm happy to answer questions at a later time but yeah the book has a lot of tips so thank you for sharing that and I'll come back and we'll do,

We'll do part two.

Yes.

So let's do it.

Okay.

Everybody,

Everybody have a great rest of the day.

Let's keep being a hero.

That's where we have to go.

Take care.