In this episode, Fiona speaks to Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener, widely known as the “Indiana Jones of Positive Psychology.” In their conversation they dive into the importance of self-understanding, career choices, and emotional well-being. Robert offers some really inspiring insights with practical advice for those seeking to live more authentically and thrive both personally and professionally.
Fiona and Robert explore the importance of intellectual curiosity, self-understanding, and the trade-offs between traditional careers and entrepreneurial pursuits. They delve into the concept of hospitality, its impact on life satisfaction, and discuss practical advice for increasing happiness and emotional resilience. Robert introduces his research on hospitality, examining its role in well-being and social trust across cultures. The conversation also covers the complex relationship between happiness and economic context, offering practical advice for increasing life satisfaction and emotional agility. Finally, they highlight the importance of connection and belonging for well-being and the need to teach social and emotional skills in schools and workplaces.
Dr Biswas-Diener is a leading authority on strengths, culture, courage, hospitality and happiness. His extensive research, has taken him to places like Greenland, India, and Kenya and resulted in over over 60 peer-reviewed academic articles and seven books, including The Upside of Your Dark Side. His expertise in cross-cultural psychology and well-being policy, have led to him contributing regularly to the Global Council for Happiness and Wellbeing. His work has also made a lasting impact on the coaching profession. When he’s not researching, he enjoys rock climbing and drawing, and lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife.
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SPEAKERS
Fiona, Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener
Fiona 00:01
Fiona, hi there, and welcome to the.to dot Podcast. I'm Fiona Murden, a performance psychologist and author. Our podcast is all about sharing stories that can help you in your own life. Our guests range from subject matter experts through to people sharing what's happened to them. Everyone has something special to offer. So as you listen, I encourage you to find those little nuggets of wisdom that could give you new ideas or inspiration for now, though, whether you're chilling out, going for a walk, or doing whatever you do while you listen, I hope you enjoy this episode. You so today we are joined by a true adventurer in the world of psychology. I would like to call myself an adventurer, but it doesn't really match up to what Robert does. And I'm not going to pronounce your surname, because I usually check with people before they come on, so that I don't get it wrong. So I will ask you to do that, but you're also known as the Indiana Jones of positive psychology. And what i There are so many things I find fascinating about the areas you've explored and written about, but you've studied happiness from all sorts of places across the globe, from Amish communities through to Maasai tribes. There are so many areas that you've looked at. I don't think happiness alone sums it up, particularly when you look at the depth at which you actually look at happiness in different cultural contexts. But Robert, can you give a really brief intro to who you are, rather than me trying to fumble over
Robert Diener 01:52
I actually like that, rather than just having you read some set paragraph, I am Robert biswastiner. I am a little bit unusual among academics and that I do not have a full time appointment. I'd love to say, Oh, I'm with Harvard or Stanford or some eye popping institution like that, but one of the things that I've always done for myself is refrained from an academic appointment so that I didn't have to be on the tenure track, and I could just study whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. So in some ways, you could think of me as an amateur scientist. That is, I am doing professional work, but it is not my full time job, and I publish on positive psychology topics that interest me everything from happiness to hospitality strengths to coaching to friendship to physical attractiveness, the
Fiona 02:47
list goes on. And I think what's really interesting is there's a depth to how you study each of those. So whilst you say you're an amateur scientist, I would argue you're not. I come across a lot of people who believe themselves to be experts in one or each or every of those areas that you might have talked about. But from my mind, from having worked with academics, again, myself, not an academic, not tenure, not in university, I would argue you You're far closer to it, but I love the fact that a, you have that depth, but B, you have that freedom. Because I don't think people from outside of academia understand how restricted actually an academic career becomes in terms of you research where the money is, or where the interest is, and there's a lot of pressure to conform within certain guidelines. So is that what has made you deliberately choose to do things the way you've done them?
Robert Diener 03:57
Yeah, absolutely. For people who are in full time academia, of course, many of them get to teach, and they love teaching. They get to advise graduate students, you know, and sort of mint the new generation of researchers. But they also have a certain amount of pressure to publish consistently, to go deeply into one topic, rather than to spread themselves among many topics. They be competing for grants. You know, there are a number of sort of technical pressures that go with academia. And I'm a widely curious person that just, you know, if a question pops into my head, I want to be able to follow it up. I want to be able in a professional way. I want to I write an ethics proposal, I submit it for review, I go out, I conduct interviews, or give my surveys, whatever it is. I write it up in academic journals. I have a real citation count. I mean, I'm I'm not just. Saying, I'm thinking about these things and writing, you know, Robert's little model of happiness. I'm I'm doing real academic work. I'm just doing it outside of the traditional infrastructure for doing it,
Fiona 05:16
which I would say takes a certain knowledge of yourself as well, and understanding of the things you actually explore in terms of understanding how to pursue certain goals, how to leverage your strengths, how to understand what's meaningful, where your values lie. So you're actually also doing something that I often feel is lacking, and I personally am bad at myself, which is walking the talk. It's,
Robert Diener,05:47
I mean, no person is an island, and I've certainly had a number of advantages, you know, I'm pretty squarely middle class. You know, I'm not living paycheck to paycheck in a way that I have to be thinking about money first, and intellectual curiosity second, that order is probably reversed for me. I come from a large family of psychologists, so I was well ensconced in the field even during my upbringing. That's open, to be honest, a number of doors to me in terms of collaborating. So I collaborate with many people who are within academia and a huge range of of collaborators. I keep my finger on the pulse of you know what's what is and is not being studied within positive psychology or within happiness studies. But ultimately I love I kind of like that we've arrived at this like I love my freedom, because it allows me, as you were just suggesting, to implement the findings. So being in control of my time, being able to take breaks, being able to engage in self care, being able to employ my strengths, these are the types of things that I think I might sacrifice some income for, because I think they are high quality of life endeavors,
Fiona 07:14
and something that I think so many people get lost in, not through any fault of their own, but through the messaging we're actually given by society, which is pursue the successful route, which is often the route that is well trodden and not necessarily best suited to the individual, and also can be absolutely soul destroying, I think. And I think, from my perspective, I started off that way. So I started in psychology, doing a psychology undergraduate, and thought, I can't do clinical psychology. So did a business masters, and ended up in management consultancy, thinking it was a good job to have, it was a good route to go down. And I was utterly miserable. And I don't, you know, I don't want to detract from the experiences I had, because I learned so much, but it, I think it's really hard for people to actually grasp what does matter and how to stay true to that. Yeah,
Robert Diener 08:17
I mean, there, there's a little bit of trade off on both sides of the fence. I like that you rightly point out when you enter, you know, what we think of as the rat race, or traditional kind of career trajectory. The downside is you might be sacrificing some of your own values, some of your own wants and goals. The upside is a huge amount of security. Someone is providing a paycheck for you. You don't have to worry about it. You're getting health care, you know, some of those types of things. So I don't want to, you know, disparage anyone for having a traditional job. The other side of that fence is that we live in an era where entrepreneurialism is more feasible, maybe, than at any time in history. I don't know if that's true. It sounds good, I think, but, but there is a certain amount of stress and anxiety that you take on with that, because there's there's risk associated, and I know that not all personalities are cut from the cloth that that they should just hang out a shingle and set up their own shop, that some of that security of a traditional job is helpful. But I think there's trade offs in those sense. And
Fiona 09:32
to your point, I think it's you're right. I mean, I look at certain personality types, and I think people who are made up of certain dispositions. Who would say, Do you know what I would hate to do? What you do, what I do, where it's a bit more free for all? And I It also makes me think of an article I saw on LinkedIn this morning, which was someone writing about entrepreneurial burnout. It's. Real. We know it's real, but I think where it comes from is not just the fact that you have these financial pressures and the ambiguity, but it's actually that no one's showing you the way. And on top of that, most people won't have had a background in things like positive psychology, so they don't know how to leverage those fundamental anchors that could keep them a little bit more grounded within that environment or that situation. I think it's kind of dangled as a carrot, almost by society. If we're talking about society again, look, look at this wonderful opportunity. You have to be an entrepreneur, and you can be your own boss, and you can make lots of money, and you can explore what you want, but there isn't the safety net put around that. Yeah,
Robert Diener 10:49
absolutely. And it gets heavily reinforced this, you know, the myth of the self made man. And I'm using the word man very intentionally here, and that that you know, is associated with, you know, Silicon Valley billionaires and, oh, if you just have the right app or the right software, the right product, the right this, the right that you can make it big. You're, you're, you're in charge of your own fiefdom. That's a very, very appealing narrative. But I think they should also talk a fair amount about the sleepless nights, the fact that, if you're a solo entrepreneur, if you don't do it, no one's going to do it. It's not going to get done, the long hours and so forth.
Fiona 11:36
So I mean, it's a really interesting topic, and I think we could continue talking about it, but I'd really love to dive into some of your explorations, both in terms of intellectual curiosities and your globe trotting as well. So what is front of mind for you at the moment you mentioned at the moment, hospitality. So maybe we start there. Sure.
Robert Diener 12:04
So your listeners, I would assume, or at least passingly familiar with positive psychology in general, and within positive psychology, the study of what goes right rather than what goes wrong with people, there's a whole bunch of attention paid to character strengths, things like being loyal, being humorous, being forgiving, being grateful. And one that has always been left out, I think, is hospitality. And it's been shocking to me that within the confines of positive psychology, you find paper after paper on something like humility and none on other topics. And I view myself as someone whose principle job in the field is not to point out holes, but to grab a shovel and fill them in. So I want to recognize that there is a gap in the research literature, and then I want to start doing what I can. It's a slow process. So I noticed that no one was talking about hospitality, and here I just mean the attitude of welcoming others. I'm not specifically talking about the hospitality industry, like hotels or restaurants. I'm talking about everyday hospitality. You have a friend over for lunch, something like that, just welcoming another person. I think it's timely. We live in a pretty divisive world where there's a lot of other us and them kind of mentality. You find it everywhere, from immigration to the political divide to anything just, how are we welcoming people? How are we accepting people? And so I've spent at least a portion of my last five, six years conducting some research on who's hospitable, how much they're doing hospitality, and what hospitality is associated with and to that last point, I will simply say that hospitality is linked to a lot of the sort of variables that you would want it to be linked to, higher life satisfaction, reports of well being, more trust in other people, greater feelings of being respected, more sort of open mindedness and perspective taking so people who are high in hospitality, who report doing hospitality and embodying that attitude of hospitality seem more likely to be faring well, both in terms of their happiness and their social environment. On
Fiona 14:51
that hospitality piece, something that, as you say, is incredibly timely in an environment where I think we're. More insular and self focused, simply because a lot of people are trying to get by. But from your travels, you've met with people in all sorts of different cultures. Have you found that there's a cultural difference within hospitality? Absolutely. So
Robert Diener 15:19
I'll start with a personal story, and then I'll expand out to some of the research. Some years ago, my family and I were hiking the Pembrokeshire coastal path in Wales, really, really lovely path where you're walking miles and miles or kilometers and kilometers, depending on how you measure things, every single day, you know the ocean is on one side of you. You're walking through long grasses. There's birds swooping around. You're you're traveling through these, these small Welsh villages. And one afternoon, I was walking by myself, and a couple was sitting out in front of their cottage, and they stopped. They asked me what I was doing, where I was from, and they said, Oh, well, we have a pie just coming out of the oven. Come on in and have some and I, they invited me into their home. We had some pie together. And the thing that occurred to me more than anything else from this interaction, even while it was happening, is that I have never done this. Never have I been in my home in the United States and just seen a couple of people from China walk by, or, you know, some people who are, you know, not local in any way, and said, Please come inside my house. Total stranger. I would love to feed you. That has never happened in my 50 plus years of existence. I'm not saying that I'm somehow opposed to it, of course not, but I've just never done it. And if you ask most of the people, you know, they've also never done it, we do occasionally pick up maybe a hitchhiker in our car, or we invite some friends over, and we have them invite a friend of theirs who we don't know. So we might have a stranger in our home, but by and large, we don't spontaneously invite passerbys into our home. And this really got me thinking about the cultural differences in hospitality. So one of the things we did is we looked at representative samples from people. So you know, looking at balanced samples in terms of, are you living in a rural or urban place? Are you young? Are you old? Looking at gender differences and so forth. And we did this for about 11 different nations, places like Iran, Turkey, Singapore, Australia, Brazil, the United States. So, you know, very, very diverse culturally. And we did find big differences. So we found extraordinarily high amounts of hospitality in Iran, for example, in Turkey and the Middle East is kind of famous for its hospitality, and much, much lower amounts, for example, in Singapore, which if, if you don't mind, I'll just comment on some of it has to do with how we were asking the questions. Singaporeans are hospitable, but they are hospitable in a very different way than middle class Europeans or Americans are middle class Europeans and Americans tend to have big homes. We have things like a guest bedroom or a formal dining area in addition to a family dining area, the physical architecture of our spaces lends itself to hospitality. And Singaporeans, by and large, lived in extraordinarily small apartments, and they don't have the space. So I've been to Singapore maybe 16 times, and I've only ever been invited to a friend's house once. And that's not to say that they're unfriendly or unhospitable. The number of times that I've been taking out to dinner at a restaurant where the person viewed themselves as hosting me at a restaurant paying for my dinner, sort of catering to me, making sure my experience was good. That's every time I've been to Singapore. So hospitality is just more likely to happen in a public sphere there than in the private home. So that's one of the interesting cultural differences. I
Fiona 19:37
think it's really interesting, and it makes me think of when I was traveling in rural China, and how amazing the hospitable people were. And I've been Singapore, and I totally understand what you're saying. I find it really interesting to think of it from that contextual perspective. In China I was traveling. In to areas where people didn't have a toilet in their home, they didn't have running water, but they would welcome you in and they didn't even speak Mandarin. It was, I mean, I'm saying didn't even, I can't speak Mandarin, but it was dialect that. It was areas where the dialect changes, literally, from one village to another, and yet they would want you to come and sit with them on the little stalls that they have around a fire and eat. And I hadn't thought of it in the terms that you've explained it, but then I think it'd be interesting to explore with you. So happiness from my understanding and mine is not in depth like yours. Isn't necessarily dependent on wealth. Now obviously within and this is me, let me stop actually hand it back to you. So within those environments, of say, the slums of India or within a Maasai tribe in Africa or in Kenya, or in those different places where people don't have a lot of financial, material wealth. Do you see a higher levels of happiness, or the same levels of happiness or lower levels and b Do you see hospitality impacting? Yeah,
Robert Diener 21:22
that's a great question. So I have a colleague who is an anthropologist, and he said the better question isn't, how happy are people? Right? How are people who are rich happy? Are people who are poor happy? The better question is, how are people happy? That is the process by which rich people or poor people might enjoy happiness. And I quite like that distinction, and it's true of hospitality as well, because one of the things that helps us do is avoid romanticizing or demonizing any particular group. And as someone who spent a lot of time researching the income happiness dynamic, I've heard a lot of people say things like, billionaires could never be happy, and I think that's quite unfair, because a billionaire is just a person, and they have the same loves and passions and children and family members and hobbies that you do. They have a lot more financial security than you do, but there's no reason to believe that a billionaire can't watch their child perform in a school play and take pride in that and that that's magical moment for that. And I similarly heard them say, Oh, well, you know, the people living in the poorest areas of Kolkata India must be the happiest people in the world. And I feel like that's equally unfair, because it sort of strips the people of very valid economic hardship that that that they suffer. So I've tried to avoid just that fundamental question and just ask, sort of, you know, just what's going on in a busty a slum community, or what's going on among very wealthy individuals, and let's just find out from them and hear from them what what they have to say, and you find that people are capable of happiness, but the their contexts are very, very different. So in my work in in Kolkata, for example, people definitely are taking a hit because of their economic deprivation. They are experiencing a fair amount of worry. They're worried about their children. They have more physical ailments, fewer financial resources to deal with those physical ailments. And in some ways, that shouldn't be all that surprising, but that's also not the end of the story. The very first time I ever visited one of these communities, children came running up to me with a trophy in hand, and I said, Oh, this is interesting. What's this trophy? And they said, Oh, they're part of a soccer tournament against the other neighborhoods, and they won. And I'm like, oh, okay, so daily life for these children is they're engaging in a soccer tournament. They're winning trophies. They have religious festivals, they they're couples who enjoy intimate moments, who share food. I mean, there's all sorts of good moments happening within these communities. So it's not that we want to paint it with a sort of all or nothing brush, but rather understand the nuances, because that will help us understand, if we wanted to do intervention, where the strengths in every community that we can build on and where are the hardships that we might address through through intervention,
Fiona 24:55
I love that explanation. It's really helped. Full. And I think that how peace is helpful as well, in terms of much of the other research you've done, and positive psychology would also point to is these mechanisms by which we can raise our own I mean, I call it fulfillment, because I personally think it's not about this riding high the whole time. It's like, you know, fulfillment can be seeing your child in a play, and it makes you happy, even if you're actually feeling generally not great about life. But that's my own viewpoint. So on the how, if we're talking about everyday people who want to increase their life satisfaction happiness, if you want to call it that, what do you say to them?
Robert Diener 25:51
Another good question. Thank you. I would start by responding at risk of sounding like a psychologist responding with a question and that is to inquire about the extent to which they might need to raise their life satisfaction. I don't think that it's an inherent need that all people need to raise their life satisfaction. Most people, that is, the majority of people are enjoying at least mildly positive lives, most of the time, not intensely positive, and not all of the time. But if you take 10 people you know, and you ask them, you know, are you sort of leaning towards happiness, they're going to say yeah. That is six. Seven of them are going to say yeah. And sure, three of them might be having a particularly hard time right now, and even though six or seven might have had a hard time at a different point in life, but most people are faring well which, which can sound a little counterintuitive, especially if we watch the news right and there's, you know, war and really, really, truly terrible things happening. And I'm not trying to suggest that those aren't real dire social and physical ills. They are. But I'm also suggesting that that's not everyone's experience. Fortunately, that that the majority of people are having pretty good experiences, even though you're frustrated with traffic, you don't like to be put on hold with customer service. Your spouse gets diagnosed with cancer. I mean, there's some some irritations, like being put on hold, and there's some real hardships, like a major diagnosis. So I would just ask, like, take stock. Like, are you appreciating what you do have? First of all, so if you tell me you're a seven out of 10, let's say whatever that means on being satisfied with your life, I personally might think that's good enough. I'd be curious from you, if that's good enough, what's the assumption that a nine is somehow better than a seven, or that there's any real qualitative difference in your life? And it might just be really appreciating the fact that you're a seven, rather than trying to pump it up. If you told me you were a two or a three, the next thing I would say is, maybe it's appropriate that you're a two or a three, so sort of accepting that hardship does erode your your well being. And you know, if you tell me I'm really bored right now or I'm really outraged right now, I'm really frustrated right now, I think those are probably valid emotional experiences, and I'm not here to rescue you from them, and I think they'll probably pass in time. Do you tell me you're bereaved because someone close to you passed away, I think that's probably an okay state to be in, and you might be in it for a while, months, even in some cases, if it's your spouse, something like that, maybe even years. But that's not to say that within those years, you won't also have good moments. You won't also have an enjoyable afternoon or a meaningful connection. So I would start by appreciating what you do have, second accepting, to some degree, what you don't have. And then only then would I start intervening at engineering something better I think a lot of people hear that and they're a little frustrated with that answer, because the intuition is that they want to engineer something better, but I hope in that answer is the idea that it's a lot less labor intensive what I'm suggesting than having. To engineer this amazing life.
Fiona 30:03
Do you think that is one of the issues, potentially, and you talked about it, and I will get the phrase wrong, but about people being comfortable with being comfortable, and what that means there's emotional agility, which you've also spoken about which comes to mind there? Can you explain a bit more about those and how they may actually be impacting, potentially, people's perception or experience of life?
Robert Diener 30:33
Sure you're referencing the book I wrote with Todd Kashdan, upset of your dark side. And chapter two in that is called Rise of the comfortable class. In that we sort of make the claim that in modern society, for middle class people, I'm not talking about someone who's being bullied in a refugee camp or someone who's being displaced by war right now. I'm I'm talking about the people who probably were readers of that book that is middle class people that we experience more comfort than we've ever enjoyed in history, even if you think inflation is a little high, or I don't like the way that the government is run, you can turn on air conditioning or heat, mostly in your Home, and get exactly the temperature you want. You can fly across the ocean in a matter of hours. You have so much choice in what you eat, where you send your kid to school, etc, etc. And yes, I understand there's some limitations to that, but if you lived hundreds of years ago, there would have been no choice. So the amount of choice we have now is infinitely more than that. One of the things that it has done this is our claim, is that it has made us comfortable with being comfortable, and that we have relatively less experience being uncomfortable or relatively less acceptance of being uncomfortable. And I'll direct your readers to the simple or your listeners rather, to the simple example, when someone complains to you and they say, Oh, I'm sad. Do you try and talk them out of that? That is, do you try and reassure them?
Oh, don't worry. Oh, it'll be okay. Oh, it's going to get better. Because when we do that, we're essentially saying that your current state is not the acceptable state, is not the most logical, rational, normal, predictable state for you to be in, sure your partner just broke up with you. You ought to be sad. And yet we are quick to rush in and say, Oh, it'll be okay, because you're going to get back out there, you're going to rediscover yourself, or that person was a jerk anyway. But what if we just said, Yeah, sad. That's exactly the most normal and acceptable state for you to be experiencing right now. One of the reasons we don't do this is because it makes us a little sad and we're a little comfortable by it. Your sadness then becomes a bit inconvenient for me, so I want you to cheer up because that makes it easier for me to feel cheery. But the truth is, if we spend a little more time in these sad states, bored states, frustrated states, and pretty short, all things being equal, then it's like going to the gym, and we build up those muscles and we learn to tolerate them. And then the next time we're sad, we're just like, oh yeah, we're sad. And I've been sad lots of times, and I can handle this, and my guess is by this time tomorrow or this time next week, I'm going to be a whole lot less sad.
Fiona 33:48
And I wonder, just off top of mind, whether that relates also what you just said to why people overall seem to get more comfortable with being uncomfortable as they get older, because they've had those experiences before. Although that's not true, I would say of everyone. But you know, you do have certain individuals. I look at my grandfather, who just became more and more delightful the older he got, because he accepted things, appreciated things, and live, lived, basically lived what he was feeling. Yeah,
Robert Diener 34:24
I love Fiona that you're bringing this up because you do find a pretty good amount of happiness in older adults. I mean, there can be kind of a precipitous drop off right there at the very end, but that usually has to do with some extreme hardship. You know, a lot of end of life stuff around mobility, health, etc. But in the time leading up to that, yeah, older adults seem to be pretty even keeled. Um, you know, when you're 20 and someone in your friend group dies, it's almost certainly an accident or something unplanned, or a little shocking, because it's a young person dying, and it probably hits you pretty hard. By the time you're 72 you've probably attended a few funerals, and that's not to detract from the sadness associated with any of them, but it's sort of like the idea like, this isn't my first rodeo. I've gone through this before. I'm I'm used to it. I kind of know how to do it. I know how to be sad. I know how to lose a friend, and I think there's a certain solace to be taken in that you've been to a lot of weddings before, so not every wedding feels mind blowing to you. Things just feel a little bit more even keeled overall. And you find that in the data, fewer intense ups and fewer intense downs and just more emotional even keeledness.
Fiona 36:03
It feels like that could be partly the ability to understand and coming back to your earlier point accept emotions, and I don't think also to your earlier point of how we talk people almost out of feeling bad or which then puts an expectation on you. Well, I shouldn't feel like this. I should be feeling happy. I should be feeling like I can show that I can be strong and battle back. But have you looked at your work at all in relation to acceptance and commitment, therapy or act.
Robert Diener 36:42
I'm I don't personally use Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, but I do think that you know, for those who don't know, it's sort of a mindfulness based therapy that looks at, well, the central tenets of mindfulness, which is you and your thoughts are a little bit separate. You and your emotions are a little bit separate, whatever the the you is. And just recognizing that allows you a greater possibility to accept that this is just an emotion that I'm feeling, that the emotion isn't me. It's not necessarily, you know, sort of an emotional death sentence, if you will, and act there's a reasonable amount of research behind it that it's effective, and it's one of many effective mindfulness oriented clinical treatments. And I think it is because of that acceptance piece, when we sort of rail against the way things are, if only I married a better person, if only I looked a whole lot younger, if only I got paid a whole lot more. If only I lived in a sexier city, If only my team won, If only all of these things were better, then finally I would be happy. But that way of thinking is a very destination oriented view of happiness. And I think of happiness much more as a process. I think the best metaphor is your your fitness. You know you you don't work out, and then you say, I'm done. I'm in pretty good shape. I don't think I'll ever need to go to a gym again or exercise again, because look at me, I'm fit. It's a constant, you know, I'm I'm on vacation, so I'm not working out as much well. Now I'm not on vacation. I am working out. Oh, but then I got COVID, and then I wasn't working out, or I had guests in town, but now they're gone, so now I can get back to my fitness, and you're you're just constantly going through the process of being more and less fit, doubling down on what you're going to do, changing the types of activities you're going to do. And that's exactly what happiness is like. You're never just going to dwell in this place called happiness. You're going to constantly be working on it. And for some people that gym is going to be called religion, and for some people that that gym is going to be called learning and growth, and some people it's going to be applying their strengths. And for many people it's going to be some combination of many, many different things. But we're always just sort of working on our emotional fitness, if you will.
Fiona 39:22
So to probably an obvious question that I'm sure you've been asked before, do you think that we should be taught these things more explicitly at school?
Robert Diener 39:32
Absolutely, I've been very encouraged in the last 1015, years that many school systems, and there's not just in the United States, it's around the world, have placed a greater emphasis on well being programming, on social emotional learning, on the so called soft skills. And I think the schools that do it very. Very well. Are schools that don't just add it as an extra class or just, you know, sort of, excuse me, not, just like, Oh, we're just going to teach someone to write down three things they're grateful for, and then we're going to continue to lump loads of homework on kids and stress them out. That's not going to work. The schools that are truly integrating it into their teacher training, into the way they invite parents on board and teach the parents the same skills, the way that they think about things like homework policy, leave of absence, where they really prioritize student well being I think we're just scratching the surface of this. And to be honest, many of the schools that are best of the at this are pretty well heeled schools. They're pretty affluent schools. I've worked with several of them, and they're sort of like, Oh, wow. These schools are very well funded, and they have loads of facilities, and the kids are all headed to college, but you also find these programs doing very well in schools that are lower income schools and more diverse schools, so but I think that is a trend that we're seeing, and hopefully continue to see.
Fiona 41:17
I hope we do, because, you know, if you look at the workplace, I think how you described it as just an add on is often what happens within the work environment. So we will teach our employees mindfulness, and they will be more satisfied, more engaged, will have higher levels of retention. And I think what I often see from a workplace perspective it's a lack of understanding of how to contextualize that, how to make sense of it for people, how to integrate it into actually, how they carry out work. But what struck me is, I mean, there's lots of different research from different angles, isn't there? But a piece of research I saw earlier in the week that the majority of well being programs within organizations do not have any impact whatsoever. So I'm sure they, they do want a happy sheet level, which, for people listening, that means where you just tick the box and say, Yes, that was great, but then you go away and nothing's actually changed. I
Robert Diener 42:16
would love it. If you'd send me that, that that article. I'd love to see that
Fiona 42:21
I will find it. Yeah, I'm talking to a group of L and D professionals in a couple of weeks, and one of the things I'm saying is, what are you teaching in L and D? Because I actually think the foundation should be the same as what we're looking at in schools, which is social and emotional learning, because I look at I work with senior leaders, and the best senior leaders are the ones who are most developed in terms of their social and emotional skills. So absolutely,
Robert Diener 42:51
I mean, it's so interesting. Sometimes, when someone wants to hire you as a consultant, they're keen to hear how what you're going to offer is going to be unique to their group. So, oh, we're mining executives in Australia. How are you going to teach us this? As opposed to, how are you going to teach school teachers in New York City? And the truth is, it's basically the same skills. I mean, you can say I'll use different examples in my presentation, but we're still talking about emotional acceptance. We're still talking about the importance of taking breaks. We're still talking about connecting with others, using their strengths, and that's gonna it will look mildly different across contexts, but in the broad scheme of things, it's just human skills. I
Fiona 43:41
love that you're saying that, and I think it's true. It's human skills. But we don't always know how to be human, and we forget how to be human, and we're surrounded by an environment, a from messages we receive, even B, from the fast pace of life and technology that detracts from us being human. And on, one of the things you said there, I would love to hear your thoughts on, is about connection, because one thing that I find worrying is I feel like we we're losing a sense of how to meaningfully connect with other people. And maybe that's my own perception, and it's not data based or based on data, I should say. But what are your thoughts about that? And especially considering how important we know it is for well being, for mental health, for actually, for success and performance as well.
Robert Diener 44:41
Yeah. So one of the, the biggest, the most overarching, sort of you know, secrets to happiness, such that there is, is the idea that other people matter. And to unpack that a little bit, it's that we're social creatures, and that having friends is important to our happiness. Is having stable relationships, people we can depend on, that could be at work or outside of work, people that we can have mutual enjoyment with. You know, it's it's nice if you want to go to the game, and I also want to go to the game for us to be able to do that together, it's a whole lot less fun to go to the game alone and think I'm the only one that I know that enjoys this activity. There are some downsides to being in relationships. Relationships also cause some stress for us. We tend to have conflict, we argue, even with the people we love the most. When they leave us or they die, it creates extraordinary hardship for us, but overall, it's so worth it, because it is such a profound and foundational place that we build our well being. So we have to invest in others. I'll add one more idea to this, which is it's not just about connection. Like you and I right now, have a degree of connection. We we clearly share some interests. We're having an enjoyable conversation. We're having a back and forth. We respect one another, so that's X amount of of connection, but we also have belongingness, which is a one to many connection, where this is a one to one connection. So is the group I associate with faring? Well, do I feel integrated or alienated from that group? And that's another way that other people matter. And then there's the way that we can look at it like, am I a main character or supporting character? And right now, we're we're relatively equal characters. Maybe I'm slightly more main character because I'm the guest and there's a little bit more spotlight on me. But it's really helpful for me to also understand that, when I leave this interview, that in many ways, I'm a supporting character and other main character stories, and that that's another way that other people matter, that their main character story is as important as my main character story, and I need to be able to help shine the spotlight on them or support them, and that also can give me meaning.
47:21
I love that explanation, and I'm now thinking,
Fiona 47:26
do we need to teach more about how to deal with conflict? Because there's the one to one. It's not a one to one, but there's our own relationship with our life and our world. And then it becomes more and more complex the more people we add in. If we're not teaching from a personal perspective, then surely it's also amplified when we extend it out by however many other people that lack of understanding that could be helpful. Were we better able to cope with our own emotions or those sorts of things?
Fiona 48:05
Absolutely, and you find so many opportunities, I'll use marriage, because marriage is a traditional relationship that many people are in and married couples, regardless of the makeup of the marriage fight, and knowing how to fight well is part of having a good marriage, right? Knowing not to hold someone in contempt or Stonewall them or freeze them out. You know, those things are pretty toxic to an effective, good relationship. So, so learning the skills of conflict in the marital context is great, and there's loads of books on that, loads of workshops you can go to, but we tend to have far fewer about how to do that on social media, or how to do that within a friendship. You know, I've read very few books on how to fight with your friends or how to post respectful disagreements online, and I think that's a wide open area for us to be more civil to one another.
Fiona 49:17
It's really interesting, actually, because it's so true, isn't it, there aren't books on how to fight with your friends. It's almost like friends are more disposable. If we get to a point where you can't resolve that, then you move on, which shouldn't necessarily be the case if people are interested in your work, which I'm sure they will be. What's the best place to find you.
Robert Diener 49:43
They can get me at my personal website, which is Robert deaner.com or intentional happiness.com both of those lead to the same place, or positive acorn.com which is my COVID. Training, but that's also where my blog is and some of my writing.
Fiona 50:04
So I would say to people, go and look you up. You'll appear in various different places, giving talks as well. I think from the perspective of some people listening, I work with organizations. I would also say to people who are looking for someone to speak within an organization or to help with certain things. That's something I believe you do as well. So if they can pin you down on your journeys around the world, you will always be on that website regardless. So I just want to say massive thank you for coming on. I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoy talking to you.
Robert Diener 50:43
Thank you so much. Fiona, it was delightful. I really appreciate all the kind words and just the opportunity to reach out and share a few ideas that are, hopefully, you know, a little bit worth considering whether or not people agree with them. So thanks for the opportunity.
Fiona 51:02
A big thanks to my guests for joining us today. If you liked what you heard, please consider subscribing, leaving a review and sharing with your friends. Your support means the world to us, and it also helps us to keep bringing you fascinating guests until next time, take care and have a fantastic week ahead you.