Lainie Rowell

JoyFull Cooking, Eating, and Living with Radhi Devlukia

About Our Guest:

Radhi is a plant based cook and recipe developer, mission-driven entrepreneur, a fitness & well-being enthusiast and a trained dietitian, nutritionist and ayurvedic student.

Whether it’s her recipes for a hearty main dish, decadent desserts or lighter bites, Radhi creates recipes to bring more joy into your life, more spice into your kitchen and more vitality into your body!

Thrive Global Article:

Connect with and learn from Radhi Devlukia:

Book: Joyfull

Website: RadhiDevlukia.com

Instagram: @radhidevlukia

YouTube: @radhidevlu

TikTok: @radhide v lukia

Facebook: @radhidevlukia1

About Lainie:

Lainie Rowell is a bestselling author, award-winning educator, and TEDx speaker. She is dedicated to human flourishing, focusing on community building, social-emotional learning, and honoring what makes each of us unique and dynamic through learner-driven design. She earned her degree in psychology and went on to earn both a post-graduate credential and a master's degree in education. An international keynote speaker, Lainie has presented in 41 states as well as in dozens of countries across 4 continents. As a consultant, Lainie’s client list ranges from Fortune 100 companies like Apple and Google to school districts and independent schools. Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠linktr.ee/lainierowell⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Website - ⁠LainieRowell.com⁠

Evolving with Gratitude, the book is available ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ And now, Bold Gratitude: The Journal Designed for You and by You is available too!

Both Evolving with Gratitude & Bold Gratitude have generous bulk pricing for purchasing 10+ copies delivered to the same location.🙌

Just fill out the forms linked above and someone will get back to you ASAP!

Transcript:

Lainie Rowell: [00:00:00] Hello friends. I hope you are ready to be joyful because that is what you are going to get from this episode.

I was incredibly blessed to have this powerful conversation with Radhi Devlukia .

I'm so deeply inspired by her work in cultivating a conscious lifestyle through her recipes, health tips, wellness videos, and so much more. You may have already seen her on Instagram. And as we're releasing this episode and I'm sharing the article on Thrive Global, her book Joyfull is being released. No matter when you're listening to this, you are going to get so much out of this conversation. We talk about our relationship with food, the journey from being a seeker to a sharer. We talk about gratitude and savoring. She shares a hugely important practice that is highly underrated and very impactful. There's so many important topics that come up in this conversation that I think we connect to all different aspects of our lives.

I'm so excited you get to hear Rahdi's wisdom. Enjoy.

So welcome, Radhi. How are you today?

Radhi Devlukia: Yeah, I'm doing really well. How are you?

Lainie Rowell: I'm amazing now that I get to talk to you. And I'm so grateful to your team that they gave me a sneak peek at the book, Joyfull, coming out... By the time people are listening to this, it's out. Like, launch day is when I'm releasing this.

Radhi Devlukia: I know!

I'm so glad that you managed to look through it. Did anything scream out at you?

Lainie Rowell: I actually made a recipe for my family last night. And. I just couldn't wait. And so I got a chance to start looking at it. I was like, I'm going for it. And first of all, the recipe started with "one- pot". So you had me right there.

And it was Lemony Spaghetti. And I'm, I'm like obsessed with lemon. It's one of my favorite ingredients. And so I made that for my family. I actually have quotes for you that I want to share from my kids because my husband's out of town so he didn't get to try it. He's very jealous because we had a lovely meal without him but he's he's away on work and he'll get to have some when he gets back.

So my daughter who's 13, Kendall said, "I'm super selective with my food and I loved it." And then my son Blake who's 10, his... first of all his eyes just completely lit up when he took his first bite and he had it without the gremolata.

So he had it without that first and then I'm like, do you want to try it with this on it?

And he's like, yeah, I'll try it. And he goes, wow, that's even better. And I was just like, that's amazing. So he said "it's my new favorite pasta".

Radhi Devlukia: Oh my god, you know what? Hearing that from children, because children have very specific palates as well. I find that, you know, if, I always think that if my niece and nephew love, I do like a 10 minute pasta sauce for them.

And when they tell me they love it, it means way more to me than when, you know, even a food critic comes and tells me that they love the food. I'm like, this is everything.

Lainie Rowell: Well, I had to start off with sharing that because, first of all, My daughter, she called herself selective. There are other words that other people would use, but I appreciated her word choice.

And so she doesn't have a huge spectrum of foods that she selects from. But my son, we actually think he might be a super taster because he has like, he doesn't, he doesn't like chocolate, which sometimes, I don't know if this is like a myth or not, but sometimes they say super tasters, people who are really sensitive to taste don't like chocolate.

Anyways, they both loved it. We are super excited to make our way through the book. It's just amazing.

Radhi Devlukia: Well, thank you so much for trying the recipes. That honestly is like, there's one thing about buying the book and one thing about having the book, but then when people start just, you know, diving into it, like that's why you write it because you want people to experience it.

And so thank you. Thank you for introducing it to your children. That has made my day hearing that they enjoyed it. And yeah, I can't wait for you to try more and give me some good feedback about them.

Lainie Rowell: Well, we're super excited.

Let's take a step back. I just, I couldn't wait. And by the way, I I've been through the whole book. It's so beautiful. And it's really more than a collection of recipes. And I want to hear about your relationship with food, how you went from you know, to use your words, a serial seeker to authoring this book that is about really conscious cooking, conscious eating, and just thriving.

So tell us a little bit about the journey.

Radhi Devlukia: Yeah, sure. So I born and raised in London. And I come from an Indian family where food was and is and always will be the center of everything. It's how we share love, it's how we share laughter. It's how we just create our relationships with each other.

It's always been through eating great food every single day. And my mom had a full time job when I was growing up. And still every single day there was fresh breakfast, lunch, and dinner that was served to us from so much love. And I, at the time, you know, it kind of was so normal to me because that's what I had grown up as.

But as I grew up, I realized how sacred and how wonderful that is to have a mom that has been able to create, not just You know, so it's such thoughtful meals and they were just vibrant and delicious. And she would think about all the ingredients she was putting in and how she was nourishing us. And I grew up and I was born vegetarian.

And so and obviously from an Indian background. And so all the flavors were just so colorful and vibrant, so many spices in there. So I think I feel like a lot of my. love for food and my elevated palate, as I definitely feel like I had growing up was because I experienced her, my mom's love through cooking and then also experienced such delicious food.

And so my palate and my love for food definitely comes from experiencing that love through her. And then I actually studied nutrition and became a dietician in hospital for. For my college degree, that's what I did. And it was great because I always wanted to be in a patient facing job.

At first I wanted to be a doctor, but I didn't get the grades for that. And so I ended up doing nutrition, but I'm so grateful that I did that because it just began this journey of having a healthy relationship with food and really understanding like what food does to our body, how it fuels our body, what it breaks down to and how those different parts affect our body and how it can cause disease in our body.

And it was the foundation of understanding the science behind food. And then I moved to New York and I started, I came across the practice of Ayurveda. Now Ayurveda for anybody who doesn't know is a Ancient health science over 5, 000 years old, and it's all based on holistic and natural means of healing our body.

And what I realized was I had already been practicing that from a young age because so much of it was passed down from my ancestors to my parents, my grandparents, and they passed on through our family. And so whether it's having specific spices when we've got a cough or a cold or whether my mum's making a tumeric patty to put whenever I've had cuts or bruises on my leg, you know, spices and healing the body through nature has been such an integral part of my growing up.

But when I got the opportunity to study and learn about it, it felt like. You know, when you find the people that feel like home, this practice felt like home to me because it felt like the most natural way of connecting to my body, the most natural way to connecting to people and the environment around me.

And so I just fell in love with it. And so that brought me closer to the way that I wanted to live my own life. And so I tried out all these Ayurvedic practices, the way you can, the way you cook your food, conscious cooking, mindful eating. And it really is just a practice of understanding your body. Iro means life, by the way, and veda means knowledge.

So essentially it's a, it's a science of life. And so essentially what it teaches you, it sounds more complicated than it is, but it brings you back to yourself. It teaches you how to take your health back into your own hands, how you can understand your body deeply, what it needs on an individual basis, not based on what this influencer told you or what this book told you to do.

No. What does my body need? How do I tune into it? And how do I create an environment externally and internally to have optimal health? And all the different ways of doing that. So that's basically what I've done in a nutshell and how I got to write this book is honestly, I see myself as a grateful student of many incredible teachers, and I'm so my way of showing gratitude to the teachers that I've had in my life is by pouring it into a book where I feel I can share them with other people.

So really, I see myself as a bridge and a vessel for people to connect to them and the knowledge that they've given me, but for me to be able to, I have a platform for me to be able to share it with, it would be a lost opportunity when I've gained so much from it. And so my teacher once said, knowledge is so useless unless it's shared.

And so it's just my way of trying to, yeah, share whatever has brought me joy in my life and, and give it to other people.

Lainie Rowell: It's so beautiful. So I'm just gonna, you know, Amazon doesn't let you do a review for a book that you can't actually hold in your hands yet. , and so I have it.

Radhi Devlukia: I know. I heard about that.

Lainie Rowell: Yeah, so, but I already have it written, and so I will, as soon as soon as...

Radhi Devlukia: You're just so sweet. Thank, thank you.

Lainie Rowell: Oh no, it's my love language and so gratitude, and when I hear you talking about it, and that's one of the reasons that I am so drawn to you and the things that you share. And I love how you're talking about this conscious cooking, mindful eating, and you know, gratitude is a huge part of my life, that is my focus for the last, you know, so many years.

And I love that on your website, every recipe you end with, say a prayer of gratitude, serve with love, and eat with joy. And it's just like I'm getting like all the warm fuzzies just right now even just reading that it's such a beautiful like take a moment And I just wonder if you want to expand a little bit more on kind of what should we be doing to be more consciously cooking, consciously eating?

Radhi Devlukia: For me, it starts with everything from when we just start to pick the ingredients that we're cooking. And so what I mean by that is, one, is this going to benefit my body? Is this going to benefit the people that I'm about to feed?

Well, whoever you're cooking for, taking into consideration from the moment you start buying those ingredients, how is this going to affect me? And so whether that means looking in at the back and looking at the ingredients. List trying to identify the things that you don't necessarily want to invite into your body and you don't want to have in your body to picking foods that might be seasonal, to really help to nourish your body in that environment.

That it's been, that it's been growing in and that it is used to. Am I picking foods, which will affect my body in the right way for this season that I'm living in. And so we can start from when we're buying the ingredients and then when you get to cooking it, there's a, there's so much evidence around.

You know, I don't know whether you've heard of that study where they play different music to different waters, and then they froze them, and then they saw all the different particles and how they combine after having been played all these different types of music, some aggressive, some calm. And so, what that taught me and what Ayurveda taught me is that energy is everywhere.

It's in everything. And so we have the ability to transfer energy. And so through our hands, through our intentions, when we start to cook, not only do we have the opportunity to fuel our physical body through the food we're eating, yes, but we also have the ability to fuel someone even deeper than that through what we pour into the food, which is why when you eat your mom's food, there is nothing like it.

It's not the food. It's the love that gets poured into it. And so the next step would be, what am I pouring into this? What do I want to feed this person, not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually for them to feel more than just a physical nourishment. And so there's that process of when you're creating the meal and then there's a really beautiful practice where you know, everything that we receive and everything that keeps us alive comes from the universe.

It comes from the earth that we live on and so there's a lovely practice in my culture and in Ayurveda where you offer back whatever the meal that you have got in front of you, you offer it back to the universe, you offer it back to everyone and everything that has been instrumental in bringing that dish to you, to your plate.

And essentially what that brings about is gratitude. And so having a moment of prayer or a moment of gratitude before you eat. You know, there's been studies to show that when your body's in anxiety and it's doing so many different things, you know, eating your burrito while you are, do reading something or while you're online, your body actually doesn't get a moment to realize that, oh, food is coming.

Let me start creating the enzymes on my tongue that is necessary to break the food down. Let me start creating the juices, the digestive juices that need to be flowing through my stomach to get ready for the food that's coming. We forget to send those cues because we're so distracted. And so the food actually digests so much better when you have a moment just before where you are having peace, mindfulness, and a little bit of gratitude.

And people may say, you know, I don't have time for that. Well, it takes 10 seconds. "Thank you so much for this food that's been put in front of me. I appreciate it so deeply, and I hope that it nourishes my body, my mind, and my heart." That took like 10 seconds. And so having that practice before you eat, and then, you know, conscious eating is... Consciousness just means presence. I'm presence. Am I being present with this food? So when I'm eating it, what can I notice? What flavors am I picking up on? You know, what, how is it making me feel as I'm eating? Is there a warmness that comes by eating this comforting food?

Is it salad that's making me feel a little bit lighter in my body? You know, starting to recognize how the food we are eating is also affecting our body. And so that can be when eating and then afterwards It's starting that process all over again when we eat our next meal. And so it can take us all the way from buying the food to the moment that it actually comes through our body.

Lainie Rowell: Basically to me, the book is about nourishing the body, the mind, and the soul. It's really very, very, I don't have a good word for it right now, but it's, it's all encompassing. And the love that you talk about with like a mom making food for her kids, like that comes through in the book, you to us, like I feel that. And so there's so much in the book. There's There's a grace that comes through in that you're making recommendations, but you're not trying to push something on people in a way that's like If you don't do this, you have failed or, you know, there's, it's such a, it's such a lovely way that you approach this.

Radhi Devlukia: Through my life, I think about the ways that I've learned and deeply been able to create change in my life. And it's never through fear. It's never through feeling someone is pressuring me into something. It's actually either having seen people lead by example and watching and observing them.

Or it's been through love and knowledge. And so I've noticed that in my life. And so for me, I don't even think about like the, the idea of judgment or scaring someone into something doesn't create sustainable change at all. But education and love has like the power to do that completely and, and create such transformative behaviors and habits.

And so I'm so happy that you felt that through the book too.

Lainie Rowell: The love and the knowledge come through and even when you're giving recipes and you're saying you could use this and then in parentheses or this and it's, it's very freeing and liberating to feel like, okay, it's not a, it has to be so rigid and this, or it's not good at all.

And so that to me is just something I wanted to share as, as a reader and a fan. Now again, this is more than a collection of recipes. There's so much you share in Joyfull. One of the things that you say is, "what you eat, along with your daily habits and the thoughts you think, has the ability to completely transform every aspect of your health".

So I would love for you to share a specific practice or, I love the word ritual, because to me ritual is hopefully more mindful, but something that is underrated yet impactful. Something that you're like, I wish everyone knew this.

Radhi Devlukia: Breath. Honestly, breathwork has changed the way that I exist through the day.

Like, whether it's breathwork that eases my anxiety in the morning, that energizes me midday, or that puts me to sleep and relaxes me in the evening, I use breath to really navigate my emotions and my moods. So, when I first, before I came onto here, I took three deep breaths and when I notice myself speaking really fast and I'm getting a little bit excited or anxious, all I have to do is actually notice my breath and pay attention to it and it completely changes how fast my mind is going, how my body's feeling.

Just by taking three breaths now, if anybody just did it that's listening, you'll notice your shoulders soften, you'll notice things like slow down in your mind, your body, everything just changes and so One of the biggest powers that I have found that has helped me strengthen my workouts when I'm wanting to do an intense workout, my breath will help me get through it.

And so every part of your life is impacted by breath. And actually it's in Ayurveda it talks about how nowadays there's very few of us that take actual deep breaths. We all live in shallow breath. That's how we function throughout the day. And so that one reduces our energy levels because we're actually not efficiently breathing.

We're not getting enough oxygen through our body our mental focus, our attention, our anxiety levels, like all of that is impacted by just not breathing right. And so it's something we take for granted because we do it however many times a day, so many times a day. But how many times are you paying attention to it?

How many times are you noticing, Oh my gosh, my breath is only coming up to my neck. Do I actually take a full deep breath where I feel the air travelling down my throat, my chest, my stomach, and into my entire body? How often are we doing that? And so Breath has been really powerful for me, and so breath is definitely, and actually in the book I talk about the different types of breathworks that there are, because depending on the speed or the pace or the style of breath you do, there's different breathworks that do different things for your body, which is incredible.

And so I share a lot of the different types of breathworks you can do to induce a different effect on the body.

Lainie Rowell: It's so powerful. And I'm just going to share a quick little story. Cause this is, this will start to sound like a champagne problem. I don't get massages very often, but I remember years ago,

Radhi Devlukia: I love a champagne problem hit me with it.

Lainie Rowell: Years ago, I was getting a massage and I had a masseuse that was a very loud breather, but intentional. I now realize what this masseuse was doing. They were intentionally trying to get me to breathe more deeply and more intentionally because I'm in a massage and I'm shallow breathing and I'm like, I'm like tense in a massage.

This should be when I am really relaxing. And so ever since then, I have been so much more aware of how it's contagious and you can actually do this. Like, if you're not going to want to say like. Hey, you should do this breath, like. Do it kind of loud and exaggerated and the person around you will actually pick it up.

It's kind of amazing.

Radhi Devlukia: Definitely. I found that in my yoga classes and honestly, even my niece and my nephew, like whenever I find them, I'm like, let's just breathe together. Like just for a second, if you're getting, if we're getting overwhelmed, you're getting upset, like, let's just breathe for a second. Me, I mean, I do that with Jay as well.

I'm like, if we're in bed and he's like, Oh, I'm struggling to sleep. Or, you know, if we're, we're talking a lot, I'm like, okay, let's just, let's just take three deep breaths together. And it makes such a difference. But just, again, that's through observation, right? If you end up doing something, it filters out through to everybody else that's even around you.

So I do that when I see someone, you know, it's like when we see someone yawning or you see someone take a deep breath, you're like, Oh, okay. Yeah, that felt good.

Lainie Rowell: It really does. And one of the things that I noticed throughout the things that you share in your work is this appreciation for the unique and dynamic.

Earlier you were talking about with your diet, the seasons in your life, there might be different choices that you make for that. And then I hear that in the practices you're sharing too, right? Because you do the three deep breaths, and you were mentioning there's different breaths for different purposes.

And so. Is, is the three deep breaths, is that your, is that your go to, is that your favorite, or do you have some that you're like, these are my go to?

Radhi Devlukia: Yeah, so if I'm trying to just get out of my mind and be present again in my body, like they say, your breath connects your mind back to your body, so usually when we're in anxiety it's either we're worrying about the past or our mind has flown to the future.

And so breath can be the anchor between our mind and our body. And so, for me on a, if I'm doing it, like just before this interview, I will take three deep breaths. And what I mean by that is exactly what I said before, where you're taking the breath through and you're noticing it traveled down your throat, your chest, your stomach, and then filtering out through the rest of your body.

And that is a deep breath. And you're feeling your stomach being, you know, blowing up like a balloon as you're breathing in. And when you're exhaling, you're emptying the breath from the stale breath that's stagnant in you, the energy that's stagnant in you, you are pouring it back out. And so that is usually my go-to as I'm making my way through the day, if I'm like, got a hundred things to do and suddenly I'm like, okay, wait, lemme just take three deep breaths.

But then there's breathwork. That does different things. So one of my favorites you know, when you get that midday slump and you don't want to reach for a coffee and you don't want to reach for any kind of caffeine or sugar, there's this one breath called Kapalbhati, which translates to skull shining breath? That's essentially what it translates to because it just increases the oxygen that travels through your body. And so it's this practice of you're doing fast, short exhales with deep inhales. So should I give you an example of what it sounds like?

Lainie Rowell: I'd love that.

Radhi Devlukia: Okay, so this is how it goes.

Radhi Devlukia: And so essentially what you're doing is short, short, deep exhales and deeper inhales. And what that does is you'll suddenly find yourself going a little bit lightheaded. Like you do 20 of them and you, you will suddenly notice this tingling in your head. That's because there is so much oxygen kind of traveling through your body.

And so I use that midday to really get my energy levels back up to get me focused and attentive. So if you're struggling to pay attention and you're scrolling and you're all over the place, try that breath out. It's great. And one more I will share because there's the left side and the right side of the brain.

I'm like, constantly in a creative mode where I can just be all over the place. I'm like, let me do the bit of this and then a bit of this and then a bit of this. And so if you need to be logical when you're someone who's used to being quite free and creative or the other way around, our left and right hemispheres of our brain are connected to our left and right nostrils.

So left connects to right and right connects to the left. And so to rebalance. And to get back into like a, a balance zone, if you've been using one side more than the other, there's a breathwork called Anulam Vilam, which means the alternate nostril breathing. And essentially what you do is you are closing one nostril and breathing in from one side blocking the side you just breathed it in from and then releasing from. So breathing in from the left, releasing from the right, breathing in from the right, releasing from the left. And so you hold each side as you're doing it, each nostril. I mean, if anybody's listening and they didn't understand that, there's so many, you know, Google, you can Google it and you'll find it, but that is an amazing one to help just rebalance both sides of your brain and to become neutral with both. So I, I love that breathwork.

Lainie Rowell: That's a good one. I know, I know some breathwork and I hadn't heard of that one. So that's a very good one. Is that one in the book?

Radhi Devlukia: Yes. Yes. Both of them are in the book. And there's a few other breathworks in the book too to invoke different things in your body.

Lainie Rowell: So I hope those who are listening slash reading understand that there's so much to the book and I wish I had a more powerful word to describe how it is just about living well. And that's really it really is.

Radhi Devlukia: A little bit more Joyfull like every single thing that we do throughout the day. It's like, Every single little thing that we allow into our senses that we do every single day has the ability to either bring us joy or take us the other way.

And so it's about creating these little tiny moments throughout the day that slowly increase the joy that we're feeling. And I think it doesn't have to be, you know, we always end up thinking things have to be a big leap or a big practice and huge changes. But actually, it just takes these little things, like breath, like eating food that makes us, that doesn't just, and that was one of the reasons I wanted to call it Joyfull too, was because, like, we shouldn't have to choose, and I think we've gotten used to thinking we do.

We don't have to choose between food that makes us feel good and brings us joy. Food can be both. That can be both. And so I think we're so used to thinking if I want to be healthy and if I want my body to feel good, I have to eat food that doesn't taste good, but that's not the case.

And so I really wanted to marry the two and remind people that, you know, food can make us feel good and bring us a whole lot of joy too. And we don't have to choose between that to feel great in our body.

Lainie Rowell: Thousand percent. And that actually brings me to... we talked about the importance of family and how that's part of your story, is that this was how love was shown to you and how you're now sending it out to the universe.

For those who are working with littles, whether it's through parenting or maybe they're educators or whatever their role is, and they want to really promote this healthy, mindful lifestyle, what are some things they can maybe do to involve kids or bring kids into this?

Radhi Devlukia: Yeah, good question.

I think as soon as children and even adults get to start playing with their hands and using things and touching ingredients and different textures and experimenting with things, I think allowing a child to get into the kitchen and explore is such an important part of them creating healthy habits with food.

So even if it's a little bit, like my, my sister does this with the kids, they'll take part together in making the food and it may just be a small part where maybe they get to have their little plastic knife or whatever, the safety knife and they get to do a bit of the chopping. And then introducing new, different flavors all the time.

You know, we think that with children, we should limit them to really simple flavors, but actually spices are such a beautiful way to elevate the palate of children from a young age. So they get to experience not just the flavors of the food, but the benefits of them to the benefits of the spices and the healing benefits of them also.

And so I think actually incorporating more spices and more flavor from a young age is a great way to create that relationship with food from a young age. And then I think it should be okay where if, you know, if you think about how fast our palates change, there'll be, you know, a few years ago I really didn't like okra and now I love okra.

And so I feel like we have to give children grace also where if they said no to something last week, let them try again this week. And they may still say no, and that's fine. But we all have gone through our experiential phase of knowing what we like and don't like. And so allowing children the space to do that too.

It's okay if they say this week they don't like something, but then maybe next week or next month they might. And trying to cook it all in different ways. You can hide vegetables in a lot of ways. And you can hide a lot of things by making them just look cute or pretty or doing them in different shapes, you know taking a tomato and like cutting it into different shapes or, you know, making the salad feel a little bit more exciting with colors. I always think when you have a variety of colors on your plate, whether you're an adult or a child, it makes it so much more exciting. So when you're doing your shop, like pick colors that are different from each other. Pick colors of vegetables that are from different parts because that also allows you to have more nutrients in your diet because the colors represent different vitamins and minerals that are in the foods, but also makes it feels so much more fun.

Lainie Rowell: It does. Eat the rainbow, right?

Radhi Devlukia: Eat the rainbow, exactly. Yeah.

Lainie Rowell: You want all those different colors. I learned that from you watching one of your Instagram reels talking about you really want to try and get all these different colors so you can get all your different vitamins. So, always learning from you.

I know I have to start to wrap up because you're launching a book! And so.

Radhi Devlukia: This went so fast. It was such a great conversation, wasn't it?

Lainie Rowell: I am so excited for people to get their hands on Joyfull and you've shared so many nuggets of wisdom and it's just, I'm so happy for you to get to put this out to the world. I'm happy for everyone who gets to, to be a part of it. And just what is your biggest hope for what people take away from Joyfull?

Radhi Devlukia: Good question. My biggest hope is, yeah, my intention around this book was one for people to connect back to their own bodies, to connect back to the food that they're eating, and for them to become active participants in their health, to really know that they can have the ability to transform their health just through the choices that they are making on a daily basis.

I also want people's spice cupboards to be filled by the end of this book. This book is about creating vibrant, delicious food that is also healing for their body. And spices are such an integral part of that. And I have a whole table in my book of all the different spices, their benefits, and how to use them.

And so I hope and pray that this book allows you to explore more into spices. And thirdly, what I said before that, you don't have to pick between the food that makes you feel good and brings you joy. It can and should be both. And I hope this book serves as a reminder of that.

Lainie Rowell: I am happy to report that my spice cupboard is fuller, thanks to you.

It still has a little bit of room. I'm going to keep adding as I go through Joyfull. And it's really, I'm not going to give this away because I want people to get the book, but there were some real aha moments I had about ingredients that I had been putting in food to get a certain type of flavor that in small amounts is actually good for you, but as I was reading I reflected on Wow, these ingredients are like base in most of my recipes and the results are not good and wait a minute this is all starting to fall into place like oh I think I'm starting to like connect the dots here so that's it.

Radhi Devlukia: I know exactly what you're talking about but thank you for leaving us a little cliffhanger for people.

Lainie Rowell: Little teaser, you gotta, you gotta grab your copy of Joyfull. Which by the time people are listening to this or reading the Thrive article is out and I already pre ordered my physical copy again thank you to your team for getting me a a preview copy, but I want to hold it in my hand and hug it. That's what my friends and I do we hug our books.

Radhi Devlukia: Can't wait!

Lainie Rowell: Well, where can people purchase Joyfull and how can they stay connected with you?

Radhi Devlukia: Yeah, so the book is available at www.Joyfullbook.com, so that's J-O-Y-F-U-L-L book com. And I'm @RadhiDevlukia on Instagram and I share recipes there, wellness practices and everything that brings my life a little bit more joy.

Lainie Rowell: Well, you are in my feed and you bring me joy. I love you are so authentic, so real, and it is very much appreciated that you put out things that make, make me feel better. So, and

Radhi Devlukia: I just want to say that I honestly feel, you know, you, you mentioned that you had been practicing gratitude for a good few years now, and it's been a focus of yours.

And I honestly feel such genuine, loving energy through this laptop from you, like the way that the enthusiasm that you felt about my book made me feel more enthusiastic about my book. Like it's been so wonderful speaking to you and honestly, you've made me feel excited and more confident about my book just through speaking to you.

So thank you for that.

Lainie Rowell: That's so nice. Thank you so much.

Radhi Devlukia: I mean it.

Lainie Rowell: I talk about, I struggle with indebtedness, so I'm going to, but I'm going to take that fully because that was really lovely of you to say that. Thank you very much. Okay. We're going to, in the show notes, make sure all the links are there to connect with you.

I really want people to just reach out. And obviously I've said it a few times, but I'll say it one more time. Grab Joyfull. It's amazing. And okay. I just have to throw this out there because. The first impression is the visual, right? So, wow, just like stunning, like stunning, your food, your photographer I have so much love and respect for photographers.

It's not an easy job. Good ones make it look easy, but wow. Wow.

Radhi Devlukia: She's incredible. Alana, shout out to you. You are phenomenal. You made all my visions come true for the book and I could not be more grateful.

Lainie Rowell: So it is, it is a delight for the eyes as much as the mind, body, and soul. Again, Radhi, thank you so much for being here.

Radhi Devlukia: Yeah, it was so nice to to speak to you and hopefully we'll get to meet one day. I'd love that.

Lainie Rowell: I would love that.

Lainie Rowell

February 20, 2024

Episode 90 - Unlocking the Power of Heartfelt Praise: The Magic Ratio for Stronger Relationships

Lainie Rowell

February 20, 2024

Shownotes:

Podcasting is one of the most rewarding ways I learn and I’m delighted that I get to share it with you.

And now, I'm thrilled to bring you something new: I'm aligning podcast episodes with ⁠⁠Thrive Global articles⁠⁠!

That’s right, my friends, this means you can choose your adventure with each story - read the article, listen to the episode, or explore both.

This episode is about "Unlocking the Power of Heartfelt Praise: The Magic Ratio for Stronger Relationships" and you can find the article on Thrive Global!

⁠⁠Unlocking the Power of Heartfelt Praise: The Magic Ratio for Stronger Relationships⁠

I hope you enjoy whatever adventure you choose!

About Lainie:

Website - ⁠LainieRowell.com⁠

Evolving with Gratitude, the book is available ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ And now, Bold Gratitude: The Journal Designed for You and by You is available too!

Both Evolving with Gratitude & Bold Gratitude have generous bulk pricing for purchasing 10+ copies delivered to the same location.🙌

Just fill out the forms linked above and someone will get back to you ASAP!

Lainie Rowell

February 13, 2024

Episode 89 - A Guide to The Good Life with Dr. Robert Waldinger

Lainie Rowell

February 13, 2024

Shownotes:

In this heartwarming and eye-opening episode of the pod, we dive deep into what truly makes life meaningful with Dr. Robert Waldinger. He shares groundbreaking insights from the longest scientific study of happiness ever conducted on how relationships, attention, and gratitude shape our well-being. Uncover the truth behind lasting happiness and how simple, everyday practices can lead to profound joy. Join us for a conversation that could change the way you see your life. Tune in and transform your approach to happiness!

Trailer

Beyond Happiness: Dr. Robert Waldinger's Guide to The Good Life

About Our Guest:

Dr. Robert Waldinger is a distinguished American author, professor, and Zen priest. He is the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the longest studies on adult life, emphasizing the importance of relationships for well-being. In his psychiatric practice, he uses psychodynamic therapy, exploring unconscious impacts on mental health. Dr. Waldinger’s work bridges scientific research with spiritual practice, offering insights into living a fulfilling life.

Thrive Global Article:

Connect with and learn from Dr. Robert Waldinger:

Website – RobertWaldinger.com

Book – The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness by Robert Waldinger M.D. and Marc Schulz Ph.D

About Lainie:

Website - ⁠LainieRowell.com⁠

Evolving with Gratitude, the book is available ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ And now, Bold Gratitude: The Journal Designed for You and by You is available too!

Both Evolving with Gratitude & Bold Gratitude have generous bulk pricing for purchasing 10+ copies delivered to the same location.🙌

Just fill out the forms linked above and someone will get back to you ASAP!

Transcript:

[00:00:00]

Lainie Rowell: Well, hello friends.

As someone who is endlessly fascinated by the intricacies of human behavior and the secrets to our flourishing, I was delighted to have the privilege to interview Dr. Robert Waldinger, author, professor, Zen priest, and leader of the world's longest scientific study on happiness. As Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, Dr. Waldinger watches entire lives play out over 85 years and two generations. His insights, offer practical wisdom and inspiration for anyone seeking a fulfilling life.

On top of that, he was just genuine and kind. He even said I could call him Bob. I felt like we became friends. It was so joyful having this conversation. And I hope that you feel that as you hear us talk. And really one of the many things he does exceptionally well is how he has this compelling blend of science and storytelling.

It's just amazing.

I know you're going to love it.

Bob, thank you so much for being here, and I really want to open up with kind of a background question, if you will. You are the director of the world's longest scientific study of happiness. And I'd love for you to talk more about it. And I just want to say, as a psych major, who, I'm going to date myself here, but. I was a psych major before the positive psychology movement. So a lot of my coursework was about how can we identify what's wrong with people. And I feel like this study was so innovative because it wasn't about what's wrong. It was about what's right.

Dr. Robert Waldinger: It was so innovative in 1938. No one was doing that when the study was founded, you know, and we were founded as two separate studies at Harvard that didn't even know about each other. One was a study of Harvard College sophomores, 19 year olds.

And the idea was to study normal development from adolescence to young adulthood. So, of course, if you want to study normal development, you study all white guys from Harvard, right? But at that time, that's what they did. And then the other study was a study of juvenile delinquency, and particularly, how some children from really poor and disadvantaged homes managed to stay on good developmental paths and thrive. So they were both studies of thriving, of what goes right in development, at a time when almost all the research had been about what goes wrong.

Lainie Rowell: And labeling it, right? This is what's wrong. This is what we can call it. This is how we can diagnose it. To me, that was just one of the things that I was so drawn to is like, wow, this is about what went right.

And I didn't know before that it was actually two different studies initially. And how did this keep going for this long and it's still going? This is fascinating to me.

Dr. Robert Waldinger: Well, it's almost unheard of. So, you know, most studies stop before the 10 year mark because they, they fall apart.

Too many people drop out. The study directors lose interest. So many things happen, right? So almost every study stops, even when they intend to go longer. This study was granted so much luck and also the dedication of my predecessors. So I'm the fourth director and the first three directors and their staff were so dedicated and dogged and they kept writing to the participants and say, will you please participate with us again?

And, and they'd send thank you notes when they returned a questionnaire. They'd send birthday cards. These young men would come to us and say, I need a doctor. Can you find me a doctor? I need a therapist. And the study would find them help. And so we were not a hands off study, which is kind of interesting.

You know, in the purest science, you're hands off completely. But I think one of the reasons why we were able to keep people involved with us was we wanted them to feel like they were part of a community and that they mattered to us.

Lainie Rowell: Well, in perfect alignment with the findings and I know you are very good about saying, as far as we know, the world's longest scientific study of happiness, so I always appreciate the intellectual humility.

I love this term that is in the book. And for those who are not familiar, I cannot recommend this book enough. I already gave it the five star review on Amazon. It didn't need my help. There are plenty of other five star reviews on Amazon. Greater Good Science Center, one of their favorite books of the year.

I mean, it's editor's choice. There's so many accolades for this book and so well deserved. The book is called The Good Life. And please, at any point, dig into the book, but one of the phrases I love that you talk about in the book is social fitness and that's, that's a really big idea.

Dr. Robert Waldinger: Well, and we made that up.

And I'll tell you why we made it up. We realized that the best analogy we could think of to doing your relationships well throughout your life was an analogy with physical fitness. You know, with physical fitness, we go and exercise and then you don't come home and say, Good. I'm done. I don't ever have to do that again.

We think of it as an ongoing practice. And what we found with the people in our study who seem to have the strongest social networks and the best relationships was that they kept at it. It was a practice for them. And so social fitness was a way to signal this is something you want to do every day, every week, small actions, just to keep contact with the people you care about and to strengthen the connections you have with the people who are most important to you.

Lainie Rowell: Another reason I love the phrase fitness, yes, it's an ongoing, it's a never like, okay, check the box, we're done with that. In my mind, directly connects to physical health and I feel like that's one of the big takeaways, right?

It's not just about happiness, it's not just about mental well being. It's also about physical well being.

Dr. Robert Waldinger: Well, that's the thing. When we first began to see in our data that the people who stayed healthy and lived longest, were the people who had the best relationships, that it was more important than your cholesterol level and your blood pressure.

We didn't believe it at first because, you know, it stands to reason that you'd be happier if you had more relationships, better relationships, but how could having better relationships predict that you'd be less likely to get heart disease? Or type 2 diabetes or arthritis? Like how could that even be a thing?

And then many other studies began to find the same thing and we began to realize, okay, this is a robust finding. This is a real finding. It wasn't just a fluke in our study. And then we began to work on trying to unpack, well, how does that happen? How do relationships actually get inside us and change our physiology?

So we've been doing a lot of work in that area for the last 10 years.

Lainie Rowell: Now, is it fair to say, this is not my original thought, I think I'm borrowing from you, but does it have to do with the fact that the good relationships are stress regulators? Is that kind of what's impacting the physiological benefits?

Dr. Robert Waldinger: That is the best hypothesis we have, with some pretty good data, that relationships seem to help us manage our upset, right? So if you think about it, like stressors are happening all day long. I might have something happen an hour from now that's stressful. My heart rate will go up. My blood pressure will go up.

I'll start to sweat. I'll have, you know, higher levels of cortisol circulating, right? That's normal. So what we know is that the body is meant to go back to equilibrium. That's normal. And what we think happens is that if we have somebody we can talk to, you know, if I go home tonight and I can complain to my wife, or I can call a friend and say, you wouldn't believe what happened.

I can literally feel my body start to calm down. Right. And if you don't have anybody, if you're lonely, if you're isolated, what we think happens is that your body stays in a low level fight or flight response with all those stress hormones. All those, you know, weakening of the immune system, all that stuff going on and on and on, rather than subsiding as you get help with stress relief.

So that's how we think this happens.

Lainie Rowell: Again, appreciate the intellectual humility always. The evidence is suggesting that's the best explanation.

If you're open to it, I would love to, talk a bit about attention.

This is something that fascinates me. In the book you talk about the power of attention in relationships. And I think this is a really tough thing.

We're leading very distracted lives. I've heard the cell phone referred to as the dopamine casino, and (laughter)

It's a good one, right?

Dr. Robert Waldinger: Yeah, I like it.

Lainie Rowell: And as much as they can be used to make connections, they are more often than not causing us distraction. So we have to get better at that.

And one of the things that you say in the book is attention is the most valuable thing we possess. And so what can we do to really nurture these relationships using our attention? What are some practical strategies?

Dr. Robert Waldinger: Much of it is just being aware of it. So noticing when am I giving my full attention and when am I not?

My wife and I come down to the kitchen every morning for breakfast and she's looking at her email and I'm on my phone scrolling through the news and we realize we're not looking at each other. We've hardly said good morning, right? And so what I've had to do personally is stop and say, wow, I haven't paid any attention to my partner.

Right? And you think about that at work, like, what if you are multitasking? What if you're looking at your computer screen and you're also talking to your colleague who is trying to get your attention? Or, you know, as a doctor, many doctors feel that they're forced to look at their computer screens while they talk to their patient.

It's really difficult for your patient to feel like you're there with them, giving your full attention when you're looking at your computer. So we're trying to find all kinds of new ways for doctors to be able to do it differently. But all of this involves simply noticing first. Am I giving my full attention or not?

So here, I have a second screen open here because of the way my Zoom is set up, but I am only giving you my attention. I'm not looking at this, and it's very deliberate, because if I looked at this, I'd go down some rabbit hole, right? There was a study that showed that when someone has their cell phone out, even if it's face down on the table between you and another person, the conversations are less deep than when there's no screen or cell phone in sight because the subliminal message is, we could get interrupted at any moment.

So part of it is not just to give someone your full attention, but put those screens away.

Lainie Rowell: I have a daughter who at the time of this recording, she's about to turn 13 and I'm probably not the most popular mom on the block for this policy I have, but when there's a group at my house, I collect their cell phones.

Dr. Robert Waldinger: Yes!

Lainie Rowell: And I just say, we're gonna be cell phone free to enjoy each other's company, because otherwise it's just so easy to get distracted. And I think especially when we're talking about kids who don't have the life experience or the abstract thinking, it's pretty easy for them to take it personally that they're not getting the attention from another one.

Even though you and I have the life experience to know like, oh, that thing is distracting so I appreciate you sharing that study too about even just having it in the physical proximity.

Dr. Robert Waldinger: Well, and how do the teenagers do when you take away their phones?

Lainie Rowell: Oh, they play music and they're doing crafts and it's, it's a completely different vibe. And it's just, I can be the bad guy for that.

Oh, well, thank you. That wasn't meant to be a humble brag, but it's...

Dr. Robert Waldinger: No, no, no, no, no. It's an important message to get out there that it's possible to do this and that people have different experiences when they do it the way you're doing it.

Lainie Rowell: Well, and this is an interesting age, too, because you have the spectrum of who's had a cell phone since eight years old, I don't want to come off judgy and there's circumstances where that's required, I get there's family situations where that's required, but that was too early for our family, and so she's the last one in her friend group to have one.

So we have a different perspective and we're trying to do our best and there's things we'll look back and go, oh wow, why did we do that? But to get back to what you were talking about with the attention, I have become profoundly aware of the word noticing or notice.

And my work with gratitude, I, look Dr. Hussong and her team out of University of North Carolina talking about the four essential elements of gratitude, notice, think, feel, and do. And as I'm aware of that noticing is a really important thing in many aspects of our life.

And it's also one of the hardest things right now.

Dr. Robert Waldinger: Absolutely. And the thing about gratitude is it's noticing what's not wrong because our minds are built to notice what's wrong. It's actually protective. You know, if you, if you notice the threats out there, you can protect your family, you can protect yourself, right?

It's good to notice what's wrong. But the problem is that these minds that evolved to pay most attention to what's wrong aren't very good for keeping us happy. And so if we deliberately notice what's right, what's okay, It makes us happier. One of my Zen teachers, Thich Nhat Hanh, who you may know.

He once, he said something which is repeated a lot. He said, let's celebrate because today is a no toothache day. And he means, you know, there's so much that's right that we never celebrate, right? We take for granted.

Lainie Rowell: It's so true. I remember having shoulder pain years ago, and I went and it ended up being I was dehydrated, I wasn't drinking enough water, started drinking the water, and then I went back to the doctor and they're like, so how's it been?

And I go, oh, it's actually been good. I hadn't really noticed. It's like you just are, cause that negativity bias and you're always looking for the threats and so I can tell there's something wrong with my shoulders, but I don't go, there's nothing wrong with my shoulders, my shoulders are amazing today.

Dr. Robert Waldinger: You know what else older people get better at it, because as we get more aware of our own mortality, it turns out to make us more grateful for being alive and for feeling okay, right?

And that actually that makes people happier as they get older, believe it or not. Which is kind of interesting that recognizing, oh gosh, life is short as we get older, makes us happier.

Lainie Rowell: I think that's a blessing for getting older. There are good things, right?

Dr. Robert Waldinger: Yeah.

Lainie Rowell: I'd love to talk about workplace, always trying to cover the whole gamut, personal and professional, but I'd really love to talk about workplace and relationships. This is something that I find to be a little bit tricky, so I'd love your guidance on, and really thinking about navigating cultivating these friendships when there's things like evaluations and thinking about professional boundaries. In The Good Life, you tell the story of Ellen, I'm doing air quotes, which listeners can't hear, but talking about this specific story, which by the way, one of my favorite things about the book is the stories that you share.

Because that's how we remember things, right? The stories really resonate. And the story of Ellen, which I don't know how much you're okay with me giving away, but it's kind of this heartbreaking situation. And so would you be up for sharing it?

Dr. Robert Waldinger: Yeah. Well, she she was very friendly with her work group and she became the supervisor of her friends. They were the employees and as she became the supervisor, she had to evaluate them. And that including, including giving some negative feedback. And then it really soured some of the relationships. And it was a real loss for her because they couldn't be social friends anymore in the same way.

And so it was an important story about the complications of friendships at work. Now that said, what we know is that it's really important to have friends at work, so the hope is you could be friends with someone who's a peer, or who you don't work with, but who's maybe in the same building, or in a different department but the idea is to have friends, but to also try to navigate the trickiness of different power relationships, right?

Where someone's your supervisor, or someone's your employee, and that, that makes work a little more complicated.

Lainie Rowell: I'd love your thoughts on something that I share with people, and this is something that I actually did learn in my psych program.

I was taught the praise to correction ratio. I was actually taught six to one, but we can go five to one or four to one. I think varying studies will give you somewhere within that range of the overwhelmingly acknowledging the good versus the constructive feedback. Is that maybe part of what could help these work relationships cause I know it's romantic relationships, family relationships, you know, we need to overwhelmingly acknowledge the good. To me, praise is a form of gratitude and that's a way to do it. So can that help?

Dr. Robert Waldinger: Well, and, and partly we need to acknowledge the good because we are so focused on the negative, both as evaluators, but also then, you know, if I get 10 pieces of good feedback and one piece of negative feedback, I dwell on the negative.

We all do. That's what our minds do. So we really need to bring in the whole smorgasbord of feedback, including what's positive , because otherwise the person we're evaluating is just going to hear the negative. It's a way to try to counteract that negative bias that we've been talking about.

We just have to, we have to do it.

Lainie Rowell: Yeah, and I think when it's specific and authentic, it actually helps people to, yes, they're going to focus on the negative, but maybe in a more constructive way. It's not just that this person's always picking on me for doing things wrong, they genuinely seem to notice the good, so this seems like this could be something I should really focus on.

Dr. Robert Waldinger: Yes, and the other thing to think about when you're giving feedback is to give feedback, if you possibly can, in a way that you're offering something that someone could do about it. Like, what if I give you feedback saying, You're just not very interesting. What are you going to do with that? Right. You know, or if, if I say, you know, you're, you're just kind of lazy as a worker, what are you going to do with that?

But what if I could concretely say, it would be very helpful if you could get these tasks done in this amount of time, could we set a plan for that? In other words, if you're saying, I would like things to be different, give someone a path, a very concrete path for making it different rather than just leaving them with, well, how do I be less lazy?

Lainie Rowell: It's like saying you're too short. I don't know how to be more tall.

Dr. Robert Waldinger: Exactly. Exactly.

Lainie Rowell: That's really not helpful. So on the positive side, the specific and authentic and on the feedback side, also specific, but actionable, right?

Dr. Robert Waldinger: Actionable.

Lainie Rowell: I mean, we could make this entire discussion about all the things I love about the book and we'd go hours because it's really lovely. There's many wonderful things that you and Dr. Schultz do in the book, but you make it so accessible through the stories. And another one of the things that I loved is when you talked about curiosity and the role of enhancing relationships.

To me, this is very fascinating because I do think that whether it's the person we come home to every day, the person in the cubicle next to us, whoever it is, it's very easy to make assumptions. Or just, we've been together so long, there's nothing new to learn, and so, can you tell us a little bit more about that, curiosity and relationships?

Dr. Robert Waldinger: Yeah, well, you know, if you think about it, we all want to feel seen for who we are, right? I mean, just that I notice you and I pay attention to who you are and how you're coming across. And the difficulty with long relationships is we start taking each other for granted. Oh, I know what you're going to say.

I know the next thing you're going to ask me. I know, you know, and we do this boy. I mean, you can sure do it with your spouse. I've had dinner with. my partner most nights for 37 years, that's a big deal. And it's hard not to take things for granted. Right. And with work colleagues as well.

Oh, I know what my boss is going to say. So curiosity makes people feel like you're really interested in today. Like, who am I today? Not how predictable I am, but what's here right now. And actually one of my meditation teachers taught me this. He gave me the assignment when I sat on the cushion.

So I've met thousands of times. And he said, one of the things to do to enliven your meditation is to ask yourself, as you meditate, what's here now that I've never noticed before? And you can do that with a relationship. So I can have dinner with my partner and as we're talking about the usual stuff, I can think to myself, well, what's here right now that I've never noticed before?

And it enlivens you, it enlivens your interaction with this other person. Even if you're just noticing that they have a new sweater or new earbuds or whatever, just, just noticing something.

Lainie Rowell: That's so lovely. It reminds me, so my husband and I have some catching up to do. We've got 14 years in the books and I remember when we met with our priest as we were getting married, he said, I want you to think about going to Niagara Falls for the first time, and how you're just filled with awe and wonder. And it's just so amazing. And now I want you to imagine that you live at Niagara Falls.

Getting married is like living in Niagara Falls. And I thought that was a really good analogy because you, when something is new, you do notice all the amazing things, but you get used to it. So I really love what's here now that I've never noticed before. I think that's a great strategy and it works in all relationships.

Dr. Robert Waldinger: It does. It does.

Lainie Rowell: I even think of my kids as they're like constantly changing. That's they're more noticeably changing than any others, but My daughter is now almost as tall as me. Amazing.

Dr. Robert Waldinger: I know, isn't that amazing? Right? Yeah.

Lainie Rowell: You're just so delightful. I don't want this conversation to end, but I really will honor your time. I promise.

Dr. Robert Waldinger: Well, thank you. I'm enjoying the conversation.

Lainie Rowell: You're so kind. So, thinking about parents and educators and those who get to shape the lives of our littles and help them. And I'm thinking about the study, which is watching them from adolescence to adulthood and later in life. Just in general, what advice do you have for parents and educators who are really helping to shape these young lives?

Dr. Robert Waldinger: One big piece of advice, I think, is help kids tune in to what excites them, right? We spend so much time suppressing that awareness of what excites me. Like, oh, this excites me, and that thing, not so much. That kind of drains my energy. But a lot of times, because we have to do certain things, we have to learn our multiplication tables, right?

We have to learn to read, that we have to sit still in school, that there's a lot of time when we suppress all those signals about what I care about, what's enlivening, what's not so much. Help kids notice and help kids value that, right? We can do that as parents. We can do that as educators. And that doesn't mean they avoid the things that are important for them also to do, that they may not love, but it means that they learn that it's really okay to notice the difference between what excites them and what doesn't.

Because it's so useful to be able to find the things in life that are enlivening. It sets you up for well being, for thriving.

Lainie Rowell: Yes, absolutely. Is there anything that you just can't share enough? Like, you will put it on billboards, you will stand on tables, and you have to say it as many times as you need to because it's so important.

Or, is there something that you maybe haven't had a chance to share before that you would just love to get out there?

Dr. Robert Waldinger: I guess the thing I can't say enough, is that nobody's happy all the time. Because we get this message sometimes from the culture that if I just do all the right things, then I'll be happy all the time. And those people over there, like especially on social media, they're living their best lives. They have it all figured out.

They're happy all the time. No life is like that. And that's really important to name because otherwise we can feel like we're missing out, that other people do have life all figured out, and we don't. Life has ups and downs and joys and sorrows, and as Jon Kabat Zinn is fond of saying, "You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf."

You can't stop the waves of challenge and difficulty and even unhappiness, but you can learn to surf through those until you get back to the better times.

Lainie Rowell: I appreciate you making that connection to social media, and I'll go on record that I do think there are benefits of social media, but I do often think about the negative side of social media and the social comparison, but I don't know that I ever really thought about it in the way that you framed it of, makes us think we have to be happy all the time.

Dr. Robert Waldinger: Right, right. Yeah, it's just to remember that when people show us their lives through photos and comments and stuff, that's not the whole story, right? We don't show each other everything and so actually another quote from one of my teachers which I love is, "we're always comparing our insides to other people's outsides."

And especially on social media. So just remember that that's not the whole story. And so don't do that comparing. Connect with people on social media. That's great. Just don't compare yourself on social media.

There's a psychologist named Jean Twenge, T W E N G E, and she studies this. And her research suggests that, that when we connect actively on social media, we get happier. And when we passively consume, when we doom scroll through other people's Instagram feeds, self esteem goes down, anxiety goes up, depression goes up.

So it's how we use social media.

Lainie Rowell: That connecting actively on social media is essential. And it reminds me of something in the book, making a connection to how actively connecting in the real world is also important. In the book, you mentioned the study about people getting on the train and people who sometimes work, people who sometimes connect with others, and then people who normally wouldn't connect with others, the researchers asked them to actually talk to people on the train.

They didn't want to. But in the end, they were happier, right?

Dr. Robert Waldinger: Exactly. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And it's a good example of how we don't always know what's going to make us happy. Like there's some resistance to connecting with other people. We also see it like if a friend says to you, Come on, let's, let's go to this party or let's go out to this restaurant.

We're gonna, let's meet some people. You might find yourself feeling like, Oh, let me just stay home. Let me just sit on the couch and watch Netflix. There's often this little resistance that happens. And so it's useful to notice, to remember, oh, when I overcame that resistance and I went out and met with these people, I actually felt great afterwards.

It was better than I thought it was going to be.

The research suggests that people are generally happier when they connect with others.

Lainie Rowell: Well, this has all been super helpful.

And I know that people are going to want to connect with you. I will put a link to The Good Life in the show notes for those who are listening, and I will make sure to link it in the article as well. And are there any other ways that people could connect with you and your work?

Dr. Robert Waldinger: So just my website, RobertWaldinger.com.

Lainie Rowell: Well, you have been so generous with your time, and I have all the happiness chemicals flowing after talking to you, and you made me feel noticed, you made me feel seen and heard this entire conversation, so you, you are a definite practitioner of the things that you share, so I appreciate that very much.

Dr. Robert Waldinger: Good, good. Well, this was a pleasure. I really enjoyed the conversation.

Thank you.

Lainie Rowell: Well, thank you again for being here and thank you all for listening.

Lainie Rowell

February 6, 2024

Episode 88 - Finding Our Happy Hours: Time-Management Secrets

Lainie Rowell

February 6, 2024

Shownotes:

Podcasting is one of the most rewarding ways I learn and I’m delighted that I get to share it with you.

And now, I'm thrilled to bring you something new: I'm aligning podcast episodes with ⁠Thrive Global articles⁠!

That’s right, my friends, this means you can choose your adventure with each story - read the article, listen to the episode, or explore both.

This episode is about "Finding Our Happy Hours: Time-Management Secrets" and you can find the series on Thrive Global!

Bonus: If you are an educator, check out: 📝 ⁠Redefining Time: A Guide to Meaningful Moments⁠ co-written with Suzanne Dailey, McGraw Hill’s The Art of Teaching

About Lainie:

Website - ⁠LainieRowell.com⁠

Evolving with Gratitude, the book is available ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ And now, Bold Gratitude: The Journal Designed for You and by You is available too!

Both Evolving with Gratitude & Bold Gratitude have generous bulk pricing for purchasing 10+ copies delivered to the same location.🙌