Boosting Your Mental Edge through Psychological Fitness with Dr. Karen Doll

Many of these small practices taken over time like incremental small steps really can have a promising and long term effect on well being. These are things that are easy to do, but they're really easy to not do just that idea that small, consistent incremental steps can have compound impact.

Welcome to the Happiness Squad Podcast. Your weekly dose of practical tips and inspiration to help you operate at your fullest potential, integrating the science of flourishing into how you live, work and lead. I'm your host, Ashish Kothari, the founder and CEO of Happiness Squad and author of the bestselling book Hardwired for Happiness. I will be your personal guide on your journey to explore the many facets of happiness, well being and flourishing, from personal growth to building more positive environments at work. In each episode we will share powerful insight tips and stories from our guests who are leading experts, company executives and flourishing solution providers that you can implement right away to make happiness your competitive edge. Whether you're looking to overcome life's challenges, to go from good to great, or to enhance your team's performance through flourishing, this podcast is the place for you to find more joy, health, love and meaning in everything you do. Join us every week as we rewire for Happiness together. Did you know that building psychological fitness is as crucial as physical fitness for your overall well being? In today's episode of the Happiness Squad podcast, we dive deep into this concept with Dr. Karen Dahl, a licensed psychologist, consultant and author of the international bestseller Building Psychological How High Performers Achieve with Ease. Karen has spent over two decades helping high achieving professionals enhance their well being and leadership skills. In this episode, we explore the importance of self awareness and how understanding your thoughts, emotions and triggers can be a game changer. We'll also discuss the critical role that managers play in creating a positive work environment and how organizations can foster conditions where people can truly thrive. Karen shares her insights on the power of small, consistent practices such as gratitude and physical exercise that can have a big impact on our mental health. But wait till the end when Karen shares a simple yet powerful tool you can use to gain insights into your own strengths and areas for growth. You won't want to miss it. Hi dear Karen, it is so lovely to have you today with us. Thank you for joining us.

Good morning. Thanks so much for having me. We've been, we've had this in the works for some time. I'm glad we're making it happen.

I know, I know. So listen, you know, I love your book Building Psychological Fitness How High Performers Achieve with Ease. And there was so much you know, there was so much synchronicity. I'm putting the book up for everybody to read. Please get a copy of it. If for those who are listening, we'll put it in the show notes. It's a really wonderful collection of great tools and practices that we can use to truly achieve more by being more rather than just doing more, which is the standard operating model of leaders. And you do it by building psychological fitness. So, Karen, start by just defining for our listeners and viewers, what do you mean by psychological fitness and the ability for someone to flourish?

So I think of psychological fitness and I use that term and I selected that as my book title because I was trying to promote this notion that we can have some agency over our well being and we can train. Even though I totally agree with you that we need to focus more on being also, not just doing so. I don't want it to sound like we just need to do more things and add to the list of things to be psychologically healthy. But I think of psychological fitness as, you know, as a construct including overall pillars of well being. So physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, having a sense of purpose, living in alignment with what's important to us, contributing to something beyond ourselves, and having healthy connections with humans. And flourishing as a definition, I see as similar. There are a lot of definitions out there right now. I tend to align with Tyler Vanderweel's definitions of flourishing with the Harvard Human Flourishing Program. And he talks about the five domains of flourish, flourishing, which are similar to what I just mentioned. And in his work he focuses on how we have different pathways to flourishing. So the pathways to flourishing could be in the workplace, in education, in family, or in religion or faith.

Yeah, beautiful. I love that. Holistic nature and the fact of agency. Right. And you know, I always say, you know, the frame we often use is, I always say, look, when I talk about being, it's about really the only way you get to being is by doing so. Knowledge, which we have enough of. There's enough knowledge on stress and meditation and purpose and relationships. That's fantastic. But if you're not practicing, nothing shifts. But when we practice, right. It's a regular practice, then we become it. Things fundamentally shift from within. So, you know, for sure, I think we're very much there. So talk a little bit about the science. Right. Why one, this notion that we can practice psychological fitness. We have our agency over our well being. What are you noticing from the work you've been doing with leaders on what's the impact that they're seeing as a result of really building psychological fitness.

Well, I think it starts and ends and always is about building self awareness and having time to do accurate reflection and understanding our thoughts and our emotions and our responses to situations and our triggers and our patterns of responding. And so I think that's really where it begins. And we say in the world of psychology that even taking the time to make an observation in and of itself can prove to be an intervention.

Yes.

So I, it starts there and then, you know, all the interventions. In the realm of positive psychology, we have so much research now, science and controlled studies that are telling us that many of these small practices taken over time, like incremental small steps, really can have a promising and long term effect on well being. And when we talk about this, there's a part of me that thinks, well, people will push back, like, well it's so easy, they're so easy to do. Can it be that impactful? And this is the notion like, yes, these are things that are easy to do, but they're really easy to not do. And so just that idea that small, consistent incremental steps can have compound impact. And my favorite thing with clients is when over a period of time, if they've been paying attention to their mental health and wellbeing and making some changes or adapting some of these practices or adjusting their mental models or their mindset is that, you know, the change that happens over time isn't necessarily noticeable. The progress isn't immediately noticeable. When we make mistakes, that's immediately noticeable, but the progress isn't always. But I love when they will have an experience and be able to say, okay, this thing happened and the old me would have shown up like this. The old me would have overreacted or the old me would have been ruminating about this and the new me is showing up in a different way and I'm experiencing it differently. And to me that is really like, that's the powerful part of change is when you don't know when that time is going to happen or when that moment is going to happen. But when it does, I think it's really transformational.

Yeah, I love that. Right. And this notion, you know, of you highlighted this sometimes with the practices that we talk about. They are simple, they're small, they're designed to be small. And you know, I want to share this story with you about. It's an old story about, you know, and I read about it and it really resonated because it brings this to life. And friends, this is just a story about a yoga studio that opened up and it was a brand new yoga studio, spanky space. And the owner really thought that, you know, by bringing novelty to the, you know, and different kind of practices and different classes, I think that was going to be the way to success. And he was doing it and he was noticing that, yes, you know, there were people who were coming, but after a couple of times they would leave. And meanwhile, there was this other yoga studio that was actually, you know, that had been around for a while and just offered the basic, the same yoga practice, right? He said, I'm curious, I want to go check it out. And so he goes over there and this studio has lines like, you can't. Like every class is oversold. You cannot get in for weeks. And he's really curious. He's like, if I can figure that out, oh my God, with all of my latest, greatest stuff, think what I can get. And so he goes there and takes a class and it's a pretty basic yogic asana class. And then he goes the next time, and again it's the exact same class. And he goes the third time I'm like, maybe I missed something and this was a repeat. And he goes the third time and it's the exact same class. There is no difference. And so by this time he's like, really intrigued. Like, he's like, I am like, really confused. And so he goes up to the teacher and he says, why do these people keep coming to you for the same thing? You're doing the same thing. There is no difference here. And he says, yeah, they keep coming because, yes, there is no difference in what they are doing, but they are different every time. When we are repeating the same basic things, they are growing. Sometimes it's small, sometimes it's big, but they notice the difference. But when we keep going for this thing and this thing and this thing and the latest shiny gadget or the flashy thing, oh, let me try this. We are drowning in knowledge. There is so much advice coming at us and people will try it and then try the next thing and try the next thing. But really there is these few time and tested things that are simple. But I think, Karen, of what you're saying, if we just do them continuously, what we will notice is that we are changing with them.

I love that. And that also makes me think of just the power and the comfort that comes with ritual and sameness. Even though we like some novelty, we like sameness and comfort and predictability and stability. And so that makes perfect sense to me. I mean, even think of like I grew up Catholic and when I go back into a Catholic church or, or a Catholic mass, it's comforting because it's so familiar and to some people it might feel rote. Yet I find that really enriching and.

Absolutely, yeah, I mean that was the reason behind, you know, why we created Rewire, which is this habit formation program because you know, 50 to 90% of what we do is habit based. And rather than teach Everybody in a one day class or a two day class, here's the 10 habits you need. You know, if we take one habit or two habits every month and we help people build those really simple five minute things, beginning and end, five minutes during the day, just practice and do it in community. Holding each other accountable, you know, that's when the magic happens.

Always better to do it, to do it together. No doubt. I love that phrase. Like burdens are divided, shared burdens are divided and shared joys are multiplied.

Exactly. So my friend, you mentioned about awareness and obviously awareness shows up in both of our books as kind of a key, key, key element, right? It's a heart of the sunflower. It's a really important element in the psychological fitness framework. So talk to us about the importance of cultivating self awareness and what actually gets in the way. Like when we say, you know, you should be more aware, people are like, yeah, I'm aware, but most people are not. So talk a little bit about what does self awareness mean and how, what are some reasons why we are actually not as self aware than what we think we are?

Yeah, isn't that funny? I'm sure you're familiar with some of that research. I will often when I'm doing group experiences, just do a little poll like how many people consider themselves self aware. And usually 99% of people say yes. Now to their credit, people that are coming to a personal professional development experience, they probably are ahead of the curve. But I think what does the research say? Like only 10% of us are actually and truly self aware. So I mean what gets in the way are perceptions, our mental models, our cognitive distortions and we can only have so much self awareness doing introspection and then without outside feedback and input that it becomes in isolation. So we can only have so much self awareness in a vacuum. So you know, we, in order to really enhance that, I believe we need feedback from trusted people, partners, coaches, therapists, anybody that is able and in a position to support us in truly advancing our self awareness.

What are some of your favorite tools or approaches you mentioned? Obviously talking to Friends, you know, counselors, therapists. But if there are two or three things that, that folks could go look into to start to build that muscle, train that muscle of becoming more self aware. What are your favorite things that you work with clients on?

Sure. So you know what, what surprises me is how many people come to coaching and they will be able to share what their challenges are or their pain points. And then when I say, well, tell me about your strengths, it's like they're stumped. People will say like, oh, I never thought about that. Which is really interesting because you'd think we'd be blind to our shortcomings, which, you know, perhaps we are. So when that happens, what I will try to do is just very simple things like if you can't come up with some strengths, we can take assessments we can take. There is no magic tool, there's no magic test. But any, any of the assessments that are out there can provide like a little bit of nomenclature or some language to draw upon to see or a taxonomy to see if it's something that resonates with us. And then ask people who are close to. Just ask your family, your colleagues. What are three words you would use to describe me? There's an interactive tool that I actually also really like, which is based on the Joharis window. And you could do it manually, but I just, I happen to like when it's done online because it can auto populate quickly. And so the exercise is very simple. You select from a bank of words six words that you think best describe you and then that will populate in the Johari's window, which is, I'll explain in a minute. People may be familiar with it. It's just a self awareness model. And then they invite people to participate. So it could be your neighbor, your kids, your colleagues, your boss, it could be anybody, depending on the purpose of your exercise. But you ask them to go in and select six words that describe you and then what you end up getting as an output and is where is their alignment? So where. These are the words that I selected that others also selected. What are the words that others selected that I did not select and what are the words that I selected that no one selected? It usually ends up being like kind of a dynamic, interesting, low risk activity because the words are typically neutral to positive. So I think it generates a lot of really interesting discussion and dialogue. I did it a few years ago and there were a couple of words that everyone that I asked to participate, which I think was 46 people, everyone selected that I did not select. And that's notable, right? Like, that's something to pay attention to. And then there were two words that I selected that nobody selected. I don't remember the second word, but I do remember one of them was adaptable. And my takeaway initially, like, my initial response to the activity was, what? Nobody thinks I'm adaptable. Like, that was, you know, our negativity bias of the brain goes right to that. But I've done that with a lot of clients and, you know, like I said, it's kind of low risk, low investment, and can generate some interesting processing.

I love that. I love that. Karen. I had not heard of that tool. I think it's brilliant. I think it's so simple. I think it's. Anybody can use it. So, friends, the Johari window. Where could folks find more about that? Where could they do that assessment?

I'll send you a link.

Wonderful. So we'll put it in our show notes. Yes. Sounds simple, right? Choose the five words or six words that resonate with you. Send it out to the others and just notice what it'll be playful, it'll be interesting, it'll be introspective. In terms of assessments, something that I've used a lot is Gallup or via character strengths, again, a good place to start. Start to give births. But I have to tell you, Karen, I don't know if you're familiar, but with this particular exercise, it's similar to the Johari, but it's become one of my favorite, and it's something I picked up from the center for Positive Organization Scholarship. It's work done by Monica Werlene, Jane Dutton. It's called the Best Reflected Self or Reflected Best Self Exercise. And it's this idea of asking people, right? You can nominate five or 10 people, and basically those 10 people are asked for writing a story on what are some of the ways in which they've seen them at your best and what they've appreciated about you. And it's collecting those stories and really being able to then distill and find what are the common pieces in it. And it can be such a beautiful exercise because often we ourselves, to your point, are blind to our strengths. We are very keenly aware of where we are not doing well, but we are blind to it. So I have loved that. I've actually got a couple of clients who run that exercise with us. So that's the other one we'll put in the show notes. Best Reflected Self. If you haven't done it, try it. It's truly transformative.

I love that. And you know that I've seen a lot of different kind of modifications of that exercise to do it on your own reflection or the reflection of others.

So let's switch to the second element in psychological fitness. You know, you talk a lot around stress and in particular resilience in the face of stress. And before we go into how do you address it, I want to understand a little bit from all of your research as well as, as you know, the chair of the Harvard Flourishing Network right at work, all the group that you're pulling together, what are you seeing as some of the biggest drivers of this sharp rise in stress and burnout that we are seeing in organizations?

Well, I'm glad you didn't ask me to define stress because that's the hardest thing to define. So thank you for that. That's where I thought you might be going. You know, the greatest stressors in the workplace. I assume that you. Is this what you mean? Yeah. Well, what I'm hearing is workload demand capacity imbalance, overexertion and lack of recovery and cultivation of calm. Yeah, that's what I would hear the most. Now, you know, there's a lot of research around what are the risk factors of burnout. And I always think it's important to note and just remind us all that there's shared accountability with workplace systems and infrastructure, that organizations are responsible for some element of that, that creating infrastructures that are sustainable for humans and workloads that are sustainable for humans. And then managers and leaders have a responsibility to do their best or their part to create conditions where people can thrive and flourish. And then of course, we as individuals are responsible for our own mental health care.

We hope you're enjoying this episode and would love your help in spreading awareness and furthering our mission to help a billion people rewire for happiness. Please consider leaving us a review and sharing this podcast with others in your personal and professional life who you feel could benefit from some of these very insights. It's a really simple way to extend and spread positivity. Also, check out Rewire, our proprietary offering to move you from knowing to doing on the Happiness Squad website, www.happinesssquad.com Rewire uses the science of habit formation and the power of community to help you build happier habits in five minutes or less daily. Now back to the episode. You know, the most powerful quantification of this that I saw was actually the MHI work last year that got published by Jackie and Barbara and others, all my ex colleagues. It was Quite beautiful, right. And they classified things into demands and enablers. And what they found was that when it came to holistic health, about 27% of health was individual based around demands and enablers, demands which are like takeaway and enablers that support. And almost 73% was organization, job, team. The picture was so different when it came to burnout.

I used that data in some of my slides.

Right. Only 3%. Only 3% was.

They broke that down in terms of interventions, levels of intervention for the promotion of health as well as the prevention of burnout.

Right, exactly. And that I think it's powerful and it's important. You know, the models and the programs we run are really, really, really. And we are running one program right now with one of the top hyperscalers, one of the top, you know, fangs, if you will, the four big tech companies. And they had tons of programs around the languishing those who were struggling, employee assistance programs, et cetera, et cetera. But they didn't have one which was on promoting flourishing, which was on proactively helping people address elements in the job level and at the team level. Really those leadership skills that really control almost 96% of, you know, how people show up and how they work. Right. Because that is job and team level. And that's what we are running because it's so missing. There's so much at the end of if you burn out, if you are struggling, I'm going to give you help and then everything else is individual. Right. I'm going to give you calm, I'm going to give you headspace, I'm going to give you nutrition. But there's such a big gap in terms of actually programs that proactively shape the work, change the work to support everybody else, to flourish, to proactively address work demands, workloads, just the madness of meetings. I mean, it's crazy. I look at that data all the time, like back to back meetings. We know from research how bad that is for our brains, how less effective we are. And yet here we go.

Here we are. Yes, that's a. It is a universal problem. I think every single person that I work with has that challenge. And we haven't cracked the code yet on exactly how to do that. But you know, in the research also, you know, it's astonishing to me just how important, astonishing and not surprising how important the relationship with one's manager is, which makes perfect sense.

Absolutely.

Think of all of the time that we spend at work. And I did a series, workshop series with the company recently and I was asking for feedback from the managers who are participating and they said, I find this terrifying. Like, even hearing it, they felt a burden of responsibility. And so I was trying to clarify, like, hey, let's break this down again. Shared accountability. You're not responsible for anybody else's mental health. But the research does not say managers have to be perfect. It just says a healthy, positive relationship. And that's actionable, you know, that's developable. We can all develop skills and ways to enhance workplace relationships.

Yeah. And I mean, you know, when you, when you step back and you think about your own experience, it resonates. Right. I mean, it's not surprising. I mean, most people, if you look at why they leave their job, most people leave it. The biggest factor. Right. Comes down to kind of that relationship, you know, of course, not being valued, but who is not making you feel valued if you're three levels below the CEO. The CEO. You're not waiting for appreciation from the CEO or somebody out there that can help. But really, this notion of appreciating or being able to have somebody who's actually is thinking about you as a whole person. Right. Matters. And most people leave because of a bad manager or bad relationship with the manager. I really don't believe there are that many bad managers. I think there are a lot of unaware managers of how they're showing up and little ways in which, you know, they can create that environment.

Yes. And I believe managers are well intentioned.

Yes.

Even very ineffective managers generally are well intentioned.

Yeah. They're just doing it in wrong ways.

Right, Right. Or they don't realize their impact and. Or there's a gap between their intent and their impact. But yeah, what you just said really speaks to what we hear about how important mattering is mattering in the world, but mattering in the workplace and belonging, which is kind of an interesting blend because we all want to belong and fit in. We're the same as ever with that. That will never change. We all want to belong, but we all want to matter and stand out too and be special and unique.

Yeah. So important. Right. Both of those. And I mean, the other element is, Karen, what you highlighted in your psychological fitness. Meaning. Right. I have this discussion all the time and I'm curious about. About how you find how you're. The people you're coaching show up. A lot of people. We have this story, I find often. Oh yeah, you know, there are many people for whom this is meaning is not important at work. They're showing up to earn a paycheck I'm paying them enough. Why should I care about meaning and giving meaning to them? And I always highlight that. No, it is really important. I'm curious for your take on it, what is the importance of integrating meaning into everybody's work?

Well, I think meaning and purpose probably blend and coalesce and there are sure nuances and distinctions. But of course, it's important to work. It's important to human motivation, it's important to well being, it's important to agency. Having a sense of purpose and meaning in what we do, it brings fulfillment, it elevates us, it helps us be more productive. It brings vitality. And why they should care is because if people have a strong sense of purpose and meaning at work, they're going to be more effective and productive. So there is clearly a mutually beneficial outcome, that it's better for the company, it's better for you leaders if your people have that sense of meaning and purpose. It elevates us.

They stick around longer. Right.

And it's an antidote to languishing, really. You know, that the absence of health and the absence of illness, if we, if we speak about that as languishing, kind of an emptiness. Purpose and meaning are an antidote.

I'm reminded of this beautiful quote by Nietzsche. Those who have a why can survive anyhow. There's a lot that we can put through if there is a deeper why. It's the way I always say this. This is, look, you can pay somebody for their arms and legs, of course there'll be enough people who will work. But if you really want their heart and mind, purpose is the way. Give them a why. And it doesn't have to be an organizational why. Help connect their why, what are they looking for in their job? And it goes back to managers. The best person who can do this at scale is the manager. And there was this research I was looking at, Karen. It was in this book, the Heart of the Business by Hubert Jolie. And he talked about, you know, when he was turning around for Best Buy, he saw this one store that had consistently higher results on every dimension. Sales, you know, attrition, et cetera, et cetera. And he went there and he found that there was one practice that really differentiated that store and that from everything else, which is the manager of that store had this practice of every quarter, almost checking with his employees to say, what's your why? What's your drive? What is your biggest dream? And how can I help you achieve that dream here?

When even asking the question and creating the space shows that the manager cares.

Exactly, exactly. And I mean, it's just magic, right? People want to matter, people want to make a difference. People want to be seen. Right. As not just a tool or a cog in the wheel, but the integrated part of the system.

Well, and in the absence of that, I think it's significant. It shows up in how people show up in their, in human performance.

So Karen, tell me, share a little bit of a case study, if you will, of the work that you're doing, you know, around this topic, of building psychological fitness with clients. Describe a little bit of the journey as an inspiration for those who want to bring this skill in their organizations. How would they go about it? How did you implement it at a client? Walk us through a little bit of that journey.

Well, I think I can speak to their individual team examples. I think an individual example and it is somebody in particular that I'm thinking of. But let's call it a prototype. I tend to work with high achieving people with demanding lives and there are really common challenges that come with that. A lot of internal pressure and strong inner critic voice. So there was a person that I worked with a few years ago and he had kind of, I think what he would call, it's the he, the Greenwich housewife syndrome where he's like, I have all the things, like I've arrived, I have the job, I've made money, I have wealth, I have health, I have a significant other, I have a family, and why am I so miserable? And that notion in and of itself generated like such angst and guilt and distress with him. And I think that just kind of comes from the shoulds that all the we should feel like this or we should have done this. So working with this individual, you know, it was multivaried and we came at it from a lot of different lenses. But I think what ended up being most helpful is for him is kind of the top down interventions and strategies of really looking at what is the core belief behind this, what are the maladaptive thoughts that I'm having and how can I reframe, reframe, reframe, challenge myself, climb down the ladder of assumptions, find another way of looking at this, bring in the gratitude practices. Even if I don't feel like it, remember to be intentional and deliberate about looking at what's right and shining the flashlight on what is good. And that is a balance. Right. Because his feelings are real. So we don't want to discount and diminish his feelings yet. There was also probably an upgrade of a relationship with his emotional experience to know that, okay, my, I am not. My feelings, my feelings are signals, they're real, yet they don't define the whole of me. So I think it was, you know, a blend of, again, building self awareness, getting some emotional literacy, doing a little deeper dive to say what has informed this mental model and what can I do differently? How can I think differently? And it was a lot of like manual practice, journaling and writing and reframing and doing it again and again and again. And then over time, you know, he has these moments where it's like, oh, this feels different now. His world was the same, yet he wasn't.

Yeah, I love that. Have you done this with groups and teams and what's that been like? Because there is a lot of individual work that we can do, you know, but it's often work in systems that is so critical.

I really believe no matter what the growth area is that we're trying to advance. I don't. Whether it's knitting or playing pickleball or whatnot, I think that we learn the best in cohort and in community with others. So whether that's a team or a group of people, I think doing this work alongside one another really accelerates it and elevates it. And that is what I love the most, is facilitating experiences like that. Because it is not about me as a facilitator. It is about the power of the group and the support and the accompaniment and how people learn and grow together and learn from each other. There's gentle accountability, partnerships in place. So the power of accompaniment, that's flourishing and accompaniment are my two favorite words. So I think of all the coaching work that we do and managers, you know, is about accompanying one another. I don't have all the answers. Managers don't have all the answers. They're not supposed to. But there is really power and healing and growth in that process of walking alongside one another and doing it together.

Yeah, Power, healing, growth and wisdom, right? There is so much wisdom that we all hold. There is so much knowledge we all have, but oftentimes we don't remember it or we don't practice it. And I love this notion of like with groups and teams, I think holding each other accountable. I think you also, I always find you also address. What also happens is somebody goes out there, right? And that's why I'm not a big fan of send people out there to go to these leadership programs because they come back and they have this epiphany and they're going to try and show up different and they show up and nine other people or 10 other people are still the same. Like within literally an hour of the meeting, you're like, okay, I'm just going to, this is not going to work. I'm going to go back to my old ways. I tried to listen and I couldn't even say anything because everybody else is out there. So I think partly this becomes, when we do a learning journey together, we're learning to say, how do we actually integrate this in our context? And also creating little watch outs. Right?

Yeah, right. The systemic element. Because then that leads to systems changes and we are all part of systems, whether it's families or work teams.

Yeah. So, Karen, what are some personal practices that have become now second nature for you that you do to kind of make sure that you're filling your cup and you're operating at your best?

Thank you for asking. I would say I'll share my practices. I wouldn't say they're all second nature.

That's okay.

I'm very intentional. My number one thing which is not second nature, it's simple and hard and it is physical exercise. And if I go two days without physical exercise, I feel it in my mood, I get irritable. So to me, it's like it's absolutely necessary to help me manage my well being. In the last couple of years, I've made a few changes. I mean, I'm always working on gratitude. Whenever I used to take the values in action, the Via Strengths survey that you mentioned previously, I would get bummed out because gratitude would be at the bottom of my list. And I'd say, I want gratitude at the top of my list. It doesn't come naturally to me. And so I practice it. And so I've certainly made progress. Not quite second nature, but I've made progress. So I'm. I am constantly challenging myself to do reflections on whether it's three things that I love about today or my three favorite people or, you know, what am I grateful for? All. Every different version of it. And then I've looked for multipliers. So this would be, let's call it a series of practices or habits. And one would be I took up pickleball. So it's not a habit, it's a practice. Yet it has done great things for my wellbeing because it's collective. It's with my friends, my husband, my kids, my kids, friends. I'm getting exercise, I'm learning something new. I'm learning to be a beginner. I'm advancing a skill Skill. I'm in flow. Like, all of that. It's like a super practice.

So again, I love it. I love it.

It's not a mini habit, but. But all of that together, it's. Has really had made a difference in my. Just my engagement and, you know, having some smart leisure time.

Yeah, I love those. I love those. You know, it's funny, you know, on your first two, I have to admit, we're opposite. So I used to be where gratitude was the last thing because, you know, As a consultant, 20 years I'd been trained to find stuff that is not working, right. You have two weeks to find all the. Where. Where the opportunities are. And you do that over and over and over, right? You get really good at it to the point, like, you can take the best organization ever and you can find all the problems, but there's an issue with that, that you find all the negatives everywhere, right? In anything.

Bring that lens.

You bring that lens everywhere. And so, you know, that was a practice that I started about seven, eight years ago. It truly transformed it. And I can tell you, right, like, we know the research behind it. We know how our brain fundamentally changes. Mine has. And if I could see it, I would. It's changed to the. And I've become annoyingly kind of. You know, that's part. It's become like we were traveling through Europe. We lost our bags, and my wife and my son, we'd been traveling for like, three months. It had stuff from three months in it. Our things we had picked up from our trip. And obviously, no surprise, both my wife and son were, you know, at least at the. When it happened, taken back my. Oh, my God, like, we've lost everything. And I couldn't care. I was like, hey, like, look, this was in the midst of the Ukraine, Russia, water just, you know, had been going on, that invasion. And I was like, look, people have lost their homes. We just lost a luggage. Let's be. Let's.

It's replaceable, right?

I think you're like, when you start from that place. But that's where I am. I think physical practice truly is something of a struggle. Like, I find all the reasons why not to do it. And even this today, I was like, oh, my God, I'm running late. And then I still went for a walk. And that was like, okay, fine, it's a walk, but it's a walk for an hour. I went out. It was. You know. But it is something that I struggle with. I struggle with. I really. And by the way, it's Funny you talked about pickleball, because it's something that I've. That he. My. You know, my wife and I have actually talked about. She loves to play tennis. I think we play tennis fine, but I think pickleball might be fun and it might be a way to actually integrate a lot of our friends into it, because everybody seems to be taking a pickleball right now.

They are. And I fought it at first, like, oh, that's so cliche. But I don't golf, and that's. Golf is another really great social activity, but I don't make the time for it right now in this season of life. So I highly encourage you to try it.

Pickleball. I think we will definitely do it. We'll try and do it. We'll try and do it with some friends. I think so many people are into it and we have, like, literally, we have, like, pickleball courts are just right, literally around the block at the local rec center. So we don't even have to go.

Far as we are recording this. Yesterday was National Pickleball Day.

There we go.

A fake holiday. But, hey, I'm all about it.

Well, Karen, my friend, this was. Look, this was such a wonderful conversation. You're doing such important, beautiful work. I'm so grateful to know you and listen, I'm really excited to continue our friendship, collaborate, create something, bring things into the world. Thank you. It has been such a joy to converse with you.

Well, thank you for all the work you're doing. I've got your book right here. As I showed you. It's all marked up, so I love that we have such synchrony and I agree. I think we could continue to do great things.

Amazing. Be well. Have a lovely rest of your weekend, Karen.

Thank you.

Cheers. That wraps up another episode of the Happiness Squad podcast. We hope you found the insights actionable to enhance your journey towards happiness and fill your life with more joy, health, love, and meaning. Please consider leaving us. Review and share the podcast with anyone in your professional or personal life who you feel will benefit from some of these very insights. It's a really simple way to extend support and spread positivity. Take care and remember, happiness is a choice that's available to you moment to moment in the here and now. Take care and see you next week.