Live More Happy pt 2 - 042

SPEAKER A The following program presents principles designed to promote good health and is not intended to take the place of personalised professional care. The opinions and ideas expressed are those of the speakers. Viewers are encouraged to draw their own conclusions about the information presented. Welcome to healthy living. I'm your host, Margot Marshall. Today we continue the pursuit of happiness as my guest shares more scientifically proven ways to lift your mood and your life. Stay tuned. SPEAKER B Healthy Living is a production of 3ABN Australia television focusing on the health of the whole person, body, mind, and spirit. You'll learn natural lifestyle principles with practical health solutions for overall good health. SPEAKER A Last time, Dr. Darren Morton explained some of the foundations of emotional wellness. Today, he's going to share more scientifically proven ways to lift your mood and your life. Welcome, Darren. Lovely to have you on the program. SPEAKER C It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you. Yeah, look, I'm excited about this stuff. I have recently. SPEAKER A I never would have I'd get a. SPEAKER C Bit animated at times. Yeah, obviously. I've got a new book that's come out that's called Live More Happy, Scientifically Proven Ways to Lift Your Mood and your Life. And last time we spoke about some of the I suppose you'd call physical strategies that things that you can do in a physical, tangible way that are evidence based, that are scientifically proven to help you feel better. And who doesn't want that? SPEAKER A Exactly. SPEAKER C And so can I just do a little recap? SPEAKER A Yes, do that. SPEAKER C So we talked about things like how food feeds your mood and particularly the consumption of fruit and vegetables, how that seems to actually predict happiness. So you need to eat more. Actually, that's not eat more. That's not a message that health professionals often give. But in this case, it's great advice. And the science that fascinates me about that is that the studies show that when you eat more fruit and vegetables one day, you actually tend to be happier the next day. So food feeds your mood. Then we also spoke about how motion creates emotion. And so the idea that just by moving, when we move our body, it actually feeds information to our emotional brain, that makes us feel better. And the good news is that that happens within ten minutes. SPEAKER A That's right. That astounded me. It really honestly astounded me that it could be so quick. SPEAKER C Yeah. SPEAKER A That's so doable. So inviting, isn't this? SPEAKER C I hope it's inviting for you too. Yeah, that's right. What I love about that is moving away from the message that there's a great I'm very much immersed in the lifestyle medicine space, so I'm the course coordinator for postgraduate studies in lifestyle medicine at Avondar College of Higher Education. And one of the luminaries one of the prominent figures in the lifestyle medicine space is a man by the name of Dean Ornish. And he has this quote, he says that people sometimes say to, oh, if I do the things that you're telling me, will I live longer or will it just feel longer? Because sometimes they're telling people to eat this and they're going, oh, it's more of a burden. But what we know is that just by doing these things that you can actually feel better and feel better very rapidly. That's an exciting message. SPEAKER A It's very exciting, the speed at which it happens. I think that's fantastic. It's not like, well, three months, a year or something like that. It's ten minutes. SPEAKER C Yes. So food feeds your mood. Motion creates emotion. We also spoke about how blue and green should often be seen and just the benefits of being immersed in natural environments, outdoor spaces, and particularly when the sun's shining, very, very powerful. So blue and green should often be seen and then rest to feel your best. And we spoke about sleep, obviously, and the importance of that and some of the enemies to sleep. We actually didn't get enough a lot of time to go into all of those. But certainly in your book it's in my book, that's right, it's in my book. And one of them is blue light screams at nighttime. Some of the other things caffeine use, high levels of caffeine use, which is an interesting one that I talk a little bit about the book in the book as well. So those sort of some of the physical strategies, physical things we can do, but there are a whole lot of scientifically proven in the science world. We talk about being evidence based, evidence based psychological strategies. SPEAKER A And that's what I love about what you present. It's not just ramped up or opinions, it's very much evidence based. SPEAKER C Yes. SPEAKER A And that's really good. SPEAKER C Yeah, I think that's really important. And obviously I'm publishing in academic journals all the time. They don't like it if you are not backed up by science. So, look, I find this place fascinating and I love to share some of the psychological, evidence based psychological strategies you can employ to feel better. So let's start without further ado. All right, the first one I call together feels Better. Now, there is just overwhelming evidence to show that we humans are designed to be socially connected. SPEAKER A Yes. People need people, basically need people. SPEAKER C The way we're made that is now, some of the science behind this, just how pervasive that is, is beyond what most people would anticipate. Now, there's a fascinating range of studies that have been done amongst a group of people who these studies have actually been going on for now, three generations. They started back in the town of Framingham in the United States, Massachusetts, and what the researchers did is they identified groups of people and now for nearly 60 years or so, they've actually been following and mapping their journey in terms of their health outcomes, their happiness and a whole range of other factors. And the original cohort, Framingham cohort now includes their kids and their grandkids as well. And what's come out of that are just fascinating studies looking at what they call network phenomenon. And so I've got a little image here from one of the publications by a couple of very talented researchers by the name of Fowler and Chris Starkis. What you can see on this image are all these little tiny dots and these dots represent people. And what they can identify is how these people are connected within this social network. There's about 5000 people in this social network they've been following. Now, what they've found, and this is incredible let's talk about obesity first of all and then I'll talk about happiness. But what they've actually found is that obesity is socially contagious. SPEAKER A Wow. SPEAKER C And it's quite powerful. For example, if you have a same sex friend in a social network, same gender and they become obese there is about 160% chance that you will also become obese. SPEAKER A Wow. That's just scary, isn't it? SPEAKER C It is scary. SPEAKER A What do you do with your fat friends? SPEAKER C Choose your friends wisely. No, but here's the interesting thing. We know that that effect, that network phenomenon actually extends three degrees of separation. SPEAKER A Three degrees. SPEAKER C And the same applies yeah, I'll actually greed to see the quote. The same applies with happiness they've discovered. So for example, here's a quote from one of the papers that's come out from these researchers. They say clusters of happy and unhappy. So it goes both ways. People are visible in the network, in that social network and the relationships between people's happiness extends up to three degrees of separation. For example to the friends of one's Friends friends. SPEAKER A So Darren, I'm just wondering who's influencing me? Like your friends'friends? I may not even know them. SPEAKER C That's exactly right. SPEAKER A And they're influencing me as possibly total strangers. That's correct. SPEAKER C Now, they haven't documented the actual percent impact that has but they have for obesity. And what we actually know is that if someone in a social network, say loses weight or gains weight there's a 10% chance that the Friends of the Friends Friends will also do the same. SPEAKER A The friends of the friends friends. SPEAKER C Yeah, it's phenomenal. SPEAKER A It's incredible actually. SPEAKER C It is incredible. And so what does all this mean? Well, one of the slides that I'll just pop up on the screen now is that the researchers have concluded people's happiness depends on the happiness of others with whom they've connected. And this provides further justification for seeing happiness, like health as a collective phenomenon. So what's the takeaway message of all this? Well, what it means is I think our parents probably told us to choose your friends wisely. And I suppose you can't choose your family so much, can you? No, but who we associate with has a tremendous impact on our well being, on our emotional well being, on our happiness. SPEAKER A So we really have to be intentional. I don't think you're really saying we should shun people who aren't going to make us happy, but we need to intentionally connect in a very significant way with people who do. SPEAKER C Yes, that's exactly correct. And I like that you've brought that in because I'm not encouraging anyone to say, all right, I need to get new friends here. Although in some instances we maybe need to seek out positive influences in our life. But that is one of the takeaway messages I'd like to leave this whole idea that sometimes we need to maybe surround ourselves and be very intentional about the group of people that we're immersed immersing ourselves in that social environment. SPEAKER A Well, it's a very powerful motivation on a couple of counts, isn't it? SPEAKER C Yes. And the thing is, there are actually a lot of places we can go to find positive people and uplifting people. SPEAKER A So what would you be thinking? SPEAKER C Well, I'm thinking of community interest groups. Places like whether it be the local fire brigade or the local church or whatever, it might be places where people are engaged in life. SPEAKER A Can I tell you something funny? Yeah, sorry, it's not really on your subject. You said the fire brigade. SPEAKER C Yeah. SPEAKER A I hope my son will forgive me for telling you this. When he was a very little kid, he wanted to be a fireman. And then one day he found out or realized that fires sometimes start at night, and he was scared of the duck, so changed his career path. SPEAKER C Oh, really? Well, did you point out to them, if there's a fire, there's probably not going to be that dark? SPEAKER A Well, I didn't actually get to do that. I just was so amused, actually. Sorry, Brad. SPEAKER C I think the takeaway message from this is we need to be really intentional about the people that we're interacting and communicating with. And what alarms me is that nowadays we know that the trend for people engaging with others and connecting with others, because we're designed to do this, is actually through social media sites. Now, there are benefits to things like Facebook and all the rest of us. I'm not putting that down, but what we definitely know is that just like the saying I like to use is make friends the old school way. And that involved actually interacting with people, looking at people in the eye and sharing. And there are tremendous benefits to doing that. There was a really fascinating study done where they got college students to actually go off Facebook. So I say to not to show their face on the book. SPEAKER A How did they do that? SPEAKER C That's a great question. That's right. But they did it. These college students agreed to do this for one month. SPEAKER A A month? SPEAKER C A month? An entire month. SPEAKER A Oh my goodness. SPEAKER C That was what they found. SPEAKER A Did they get medals? SPEAKER C Well, this is some of the results that they found. Here's a quote from the researchers here. It said that rather than enhancing wellbeing, these findings suggest that Facebook may undermine it. Why did they conclude that? Well, look at this next slide here. These were the results of the study. They actually found that after one week, these college students were reporting higher levels of life satisfaction. Social activity. Get that? Social activity. SPEAKER A Social activity has improved. SPEAKER C Social satisfaction has improved. And then after one month, they were reporting high levels of happiness and lower levels of loneliness. SPEAKER A That's wonderful. Do you know we were having a meal out one time and there were three young women sitting together and they'd had their meal, I think, or they weren't eating, but they're all doing something on their phone. SPEAKER C Yes. SPEAKER A And I thought, that's incredible. They've come out together to be together. SPEAKER C Yes. SPEAKER A But they were just all separately engaged with their phone. SPEAKER C Yes, and we see this all the time. In fact, there's actually a bit of a pushback amongst the younger community. And this excites me, where when they go out for meals together, there is a movement where everyone has to put their phone in the center, and whoever picks it up first, they're the ones who pay for the meal. That's a really good exactly. But I love this. Once again, there are benefits to social media. They allow us to connect with people that we otherwise wouldn't have and stay in contact with community, with family members and all the rest of it. But we're designed to interact with people on a face to face level. And so studies like this are coming back. That the importance of strengthening our social connections. And what you actually alluded to it earlier. I think one of the takeaway messages from that is that there are a lot of things that we can do, we can take ownership for in strengthening our existing relationships. We can be more proactive about showing love to other. You know, one of my favorite books written is The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman, where he talks about there are things that we can do. We can actually be intentional about showing love to other people by acts of kindness, by giving of gifts, by spending quality time and these things. The interesting thing is that when we give in this way, we tend to receive. SPEAKER A Yes. SPEAKER C And so it's really powerful, and I talk about this in my book. The other thing that we can powerfully do to boost our social relationships and connections is to forgive. SPEAKER A Do you know? I think that is probably the thing that in my observation, that's the thing I think people find the hardest thing to do. Even people they read about, they actively feel bad about them and actively generate a lot of animosity. I mean, they've done some terrible things. It's very hard. It's a very difficult thing to do. I think you really need help from above, to be honest, to be able to even do that. It's not normal. SPEAKER C That's right. One of my observations, and I talk about this in the book is that look, there are incredible stories of people that I just admire fantastically because of their ability to forgive, incredible things that have happened to them, terrible things that have happened to them. And once again, I just admire that in amazing way. But unforgiveness actually savages all of us. And often the things that ravage relationships can often be small things that just get carried on and perpetuated. There's a man that I love. His work, dr. Dick Tibbets wrote a book called Forgive to Live. And in the book, he actually has a quote, and I cite this in my book where he says, forgiveness is not forgetting. There are a whole lot of things that forgiveness there are misconceptions regarding it. But I like the way he defines it. He says, Forgiveness is giving up my right to hurt you for hurting me. And what it does is actually by adopting that mentality, that, okay, I'm not going to perpetuate this any further. I'm going to be the circuit breaker in this cycle of unforgiveness. It really has the power to transform relationships. And so, yeah, incredibly powerful there's. SPEAKER A Actually, I've thought about this at times because it's something we all face in life. And I think the most beautiful model of forgiveness is our own bodies. They can be treated very badly or neglected or whatever, and you start treating them right, like you were just saying, and quickly they seem to forgive what's been missing or what haven't been eating the fruit and veggies, and by the next day, we're happier. One day. That's a beautiful lesson, isn't it? The creator has put that right inside our being to say, this is what I'm like. SPEAKER C Yes. SPEAKER A And this is what I want you to be like. I've created you a body that forgives and want you to be like that, too. And you'll be better yes. When you do. SPEAKER C I think it's a beautiful analogy. Yeah. So look together. Feels better. This is one of the strategies we need to be really intentional about strengthening our relationships and immersing ourselves in really positive social environments. But there are other things we can do as well. SPEAKER A All right, what is the more well. SPEAKER C The next one I call Feelings follow Your Focus. Now, there are some really fascinating studies that have been done in this space by psychologists. And one of them I'll show you a little graph here. This is called Three Good things. And what you can see here is a study that was conducted over the space of six months. And what they got people to do is to, at the end of each day, to write down three things that went well that day and why they went well. It's sometimes called three blessings. So they got people to do this for a week. And so these people had jot down three things that went well that day. And really what it was an exercise in getting people to focus on positive things in the present. And by doing that, what we actually know is that there are interactions, there are sort of neural pathways between the part of your brain responsible for what you focus on and how you feel your emotional brain. So this is why focus feeds feelings. And so what this study found, which I find interesting, is that after one week of doing this, you can see here, these are the green lines that represent the people that actually did it. Their happiness over the next six months progressively increased. The blue bars there are just the control group. These are random people that didn't do the exercise. We don't normally, as a scientist and as a researcher, often we see where we get people to do something and it might have an effect. And then over time, that effect dwindles off. People that did this, the effect gradually grew. SPEAKER A How long did they do that for? SPEAKER C Six months. They were only asked to do it for a week, but by the end of the week, many of the people said, I'm benefiting from this. I realize that feelings do follow your focus, and by doing this, I'm feeling better. And so they actually got into that pattern, and many of them held on and kept doing it. SPEAKER A Is it important to actually write it down or just mentally ignore it's? SPEAKER C A great question. And what we think is that when you write something down, you actually engage another sense. It becomes a kinesthetic experience in the same way as when we read things out to ourselves. It actually becomes an auditory as compared to just a visual thing. SPEAKER A So it's more powerful to actually write. SPEAKER C Yeah, that seems to be the case. Here's another one, and I'll tell you what. If you want some homework in terms of something that can have a profound effect on your emotional well being, here it is. This is called the Gratitude visit. In fact, let me test you on this. SPEAKER A Oh, dear. SPEAKER C I hope this isn't well, I'm not going to ask you specifically, but I'll invite you to do this as well. SPEAKER A All right. SPEAKER C Can you think of someone who has had a positive, significant impact on your life? You don't need to tell me who it is. Well, I could okay, that's great. SPEAKER A You want me to? SPEAKER C You can. You can welcome to share it if you like. SPEAKER A Darren Morton. SPEAKER C Whoa. How's that? SPEAKER A And that's the truth. That's the truth. That's not just because you're sitting here on TV. That's the truth. You have. You really have. And it's very evident just from who you are that you have taken on board all of this lovely information that you're so kindly sharing. Thank you. That's lovely for you to say, and that's genuine. SPEAKER C I would like you to choose someone else you'd love. But here's the assignment. Think of that person and please choose someone else. But I really appreciate those kind words and do the same here, then go away and write down a few paragraphs about that person and the impact that they've made on your life. And then here's the really challenging part. Go and read it to that person face to face. Very challenging. And even if you can't do the face to face thing, just sharing it with that person goes a long way towards promoting this. But here's what the studies find. People who do that, and I've done that myself. I actually did that for my mum. They will report people who do it report higher levels of happiness. This is the person that did it, not the recipient. This is the giver for one month. After that's, incredible. Incredibly rewarding. What else do you know that will boost your level of happiness? SPEAKER A Just going to say, what else do you know that would do that? SPEAKER C It's incredible. So feelings follow your focus. And I think what the gratitude visit is really is an exercise in focusing on the positive in the past. That what went well experiment that I spoke about, that's really about focusing on what went positive in the present, right, what happened today. And then the other element to that is obviously focusing on what's positive in the future. And I love the idea that we have a hope. I come from a Christian background, obviously, and that actually gives us ultimately, something very, very positive to hang our hopes on. Hope is incredibly powerful. The whole notion of where there is hope, there is life, never a true word was spoken than that. Feelings follow your focus. Together is better. These are psychological things that we can do that can have a measurable impact on our well being. But there's one more, and I call this one giving is living. Look, what we know is that humans are just designed to look out for others. Well, they should be designed to do that. We have in this innate thing inside us that wires us for this. In fact, one of the fathers of this whole psychological movement that's exploring how we can help people to feel better and to happier and enjoy a more vibrant life is a man by the name of Professor Martin Seligman. And he has this quote, and I love this quote here. It says, doing a kindness produces the single most reliable increase in wellbeing, that is happiness of any exercise that we've ever tested. SPEAKER A So that's right up there at the top. Right up at the top. That is the one. SPEAKER C Yes. SPEAKER A You've mentioned a lot of things that are excellent, but that's number one, that is the top. SPEAKER C So in his own words, that is the creme de la creme. That is, if you put everything doing a kindness. I've actually come to believe that at an emotional level, there is a law that I suppose governs our emotional state and it quite simply says that you reap what you sow when we purposefully and intentionally seek about dragging others down, we go down with them. But if we purposefully intentionally seek to lift others up then we go up with them as well. SPEAKER A It makes me think it is more blessed to give than to receive. That's a literally true statement. It doesn't sound like it could be. You kind of think if you give something well you've lost it. That's gone now. But really it actually literally scientifically is. SPEAKER C True and there are so many studies coming through that demonstrate this. Here is another quote that I found. This appeared in American Scientific Mind and how's this? This is from just a secular publication but they said this they said our species is apparently the only one with a genetic makeup that promotes selflessness and true altruistic behavior. What they were saying in that is that why is it that we would give to people on the other side of the planet who are disadvantaged that we can aid them in some way when there is no chance of them reciprocating that kindness to us. And what they conclude is that there is something deeply woven into our very fabric that knows that it is more blessed to give than receive and by doing that it actually lifts us that the helpers high is a very real phenomenon. SPEAKER A I'd even though suggest there that I think that many of the people who do that don't do it to gain a benefit because they probably didn't know that research. Yes, they did it genuinely and that's probably why the actual reward came. SPEAKER C Yeah and I love that and of course what I'm not encouraging you to do is to go out and do something kind so that you get a lift. That's just a side effect of the consequence. It's so much so that service and this is really what we're talking about here having a service mentality has been described not as self sacrifice but enlightened self interest which obviously we don't want to adopt that perspective but that's the flow on consequence. When we genuinely try and lift other people, we go up with them. Some of the studies show, for example, we know that amongst service orientated lawyers they report high levels of happiness and well being than money orientated lawyers even though they don't earn anywhere near the same sort of dollars. We know has this in the United States there are studies that actually show that tripling your income. So going from these are in people that are earning less than $20,000 a year which is essentially sort of the poverty line to earning more than $75,000 a year. Now that you think, wow, there's a pretty good well being boost that will come from that. Well yeah, you do get a wellbeing boost from that but it's about equivalent to volunteering once a week. Oh so given that the chance of your income tripling is probably fairly slim, what might be a better path is just to go and volunteer once a week for a couple of hours. SPEAKER A Do you know, there are I don't know the figures, but huge number of volunteers in Australia. They're reporting that they don't know how the nation would actually get by if they didn't have those volunteers in all kinds of areas. So, actually, there's a lot of scope out there, and you could be thinking about maybe something that you would love to do and that people would love to receive. SPEAKER C Yeah. Hey, look, just to wrap it up, obviously I'm very passionate about this, and there are just so many things that I would love for people to know about actionable, things they can do to help them feel better and to improve the quality of their mood. Lift their mood and lift their life. And actually, I've even developed a program. My book is called Live More Happy, Scientifically Proven Ways to Lift Your Mood in Your Life. I've got a program that accompanies. That where people get to experience it. I call it the lift project. You can learn more about that stuff on my website, which is drdarrenmorton.com. But yeah, look, I think we need to get this message out here. People need to understand there are very powerful and actionable things they can do to lift their movement. SPEAKER A Well, honestly, I feel inspired. I sort of can't wait to go and get into this because it's just so beautiful. I mean, the strategies are so beautiful and so inviting. And to think that that amount of extra benefit came from fruit and veggies, for example, which I didn't know. I mean, I knew they were good for all kinds of things, but to be happy again the next day so actually, I've got a tray of mangoes. I must make sure. Yeah. So, absolutely fantastic information. And I love your research, and I love the way that you've actually presented it. So we've really, really loved having you on the program and have these two sessions. I hope everybody buys your book, and I say that because for their benefit, that's altruistic, okay, because that's just an absolutely wonderful book. So if you'd like to watch our programs on demand, just go to our website. That's 3abnaustralia.org.au Click on the watch button. We'll see you next time, and God bless you. SPEAKER B You’ve been listening to a production of 3ABN Australia Television.