How to Fall in Love With Your Work Stella Grizont #563

Bulletproof radio, a state of high performance. You're listening to bulletproof radio with Dave Asprey. Today's cool fact of the day is that research now shows you that happiness is controlled by a body system. And we have some new power to control some more of it. Most of the research around changing your happiness levels points to a concept called hedonic adaptation. It means when something good or bad happens to you over time, you get used to it. And researchers have found that hedonic adaptation happens with the majority of good and bad things that happen in your daily life. It exists in your body to help you maintain balance during stress and return you to neutral to keep your stress down. So it's there for your best interests. But they also found in the latest roundup of research is that you control about half your happiness level. And the exact level can vary from person to person. But it looks like about half of it might be genetic or our environment, which they like to call the happiness set point, which, by the way, I don't believe in. And about 40 to 50% of our happiness is within our power because so much of what we believe is genetic is actually epigenetic or controlled by the environment around us. And that's why I have a hard time when researchers say, oh, it's about 40 to 50%. Like, I just don't believe you. It's probably much higher than that. Much like the people 20 years ago said cancer is genetic. And now some of the cutting edge cancer researchers that I've interviewed or become friends with will say, we think 2% of cancer is genetic. The rest of it's environmental. So your happiness is environmental. And it's also what's going on inside your head, how much trauma you have and stuff like that. And in my own path, from being generally pretty cranky and unhappy most of the time to being pretty darn happy, even though I have more on my plate than is sane. Well, I feel like maybe it's more hackable than we like to think. And because you listen to the show regularly, you know that I'm a master of foreshadowing. There might be the chance that we're going to talk about happiness today on the show. What do you think? Of course there is. But before we talk about happiness, if you're a longtime listener, you know today's guest, her name is Stella Gozant, and she has been on twice very, very early on the show to talk about happiness. I think an archive edition, sometime in the first hundred, if I remember right, and again in the Two hundreds. And today we're going to talk about, well, a bunch of different things that have to do with her experience teaching work, life balance and happiness companies like Dow Jones. She's one of the first 150 people to earn a master's degree in applied positive psychology, which you could also call the science of happiness from the University of Pennsylvania, which is apparently a pretty good school because I went to Wharton after all. So I'm going to give you an extra bonus point there. Stella, welcome to the show.

Thank you. So great to be back.

You've coached 1500 leaders in 24 countries, including. And you've keynoted about happiness at Google and VMware and Johnson and Johnson and things like that. Is this because you were really an unhappy, sad person and you thought you would go study positive psychology to see if you could undo that problem, or is there some other dark story behind why you would do this?

Yes. I mean, actually, that is why I spent the first 10 years of my career kind of feeling, you know, I have highs, but then I kept hitting these real lows and feeling really miserable and having just literally. I remember one time I was watching focus groups because I used to be a brand strategist. And you sit in this dark room watching people talk about stuff. And I was like, stuffing my face with M&Ms. Just to stay awake. And I just had this moment of, oh, my God, I can't believe this is my life. And I ran to the bathroom, I sat there and I clasped my hands and I literally prayed to God and I said, there's got to be more than this. And I found myself in that place one too many times. And I really wanted to crack it. Like, what's up with this? How come I keep landing in this place of feeling like there's got to be more and I keep achieving everything I see say I'm going to achieve, but I'm not happy. And so that's why I went to study the science of happiness, because they say, you know, you learn what you or you teach what you want to learn. And so I'm constantly learning. But, yeah, I feel like I finally cracked the code. Thank God, because that sucked.

Yeah, achieving, thinking it'll make you happy, and then not getting happy sucks. I did the same thing in my 20s. But you came across this. I think a lot of people listening are at that point where you're doing what's supposed to make you happy, which is your parents told you you have to go to med school or law school or get a degree. In whatever, but I don't want to, and it's not what makes me happy. And we have this inherent internal conflict about it. What's your advice for people who are sitting there saying, I don't feel like I'm doing what makes me happy, but I kind of like to eat?

Yeah, I have gone to the bottom of an Nutella jar multiple times in my misery at work. But that aside, I would say that the big mistake I see people making over and over again, myself included, was that you set these goals or you think about whenever things suck and we're just not happy. We just want to escape that. So we want to do something completely. The grass is always greener. So we think, oh, well, if I just change my job or if I just find a new boss or if I just finally go do something that I've been really passionate about, then it will be okay. Then I'll be happy. And so we have this innate desire to escape when we're feeling really miserable and negative. And so what I first tell people is actually you. You know, and these aren't my words, but, you know, no matter where you go, there you are. And I always tell people, well, no matter where you work, there you are. And so unless you do the inner work first, you can go ahead and find a totally different job or different manager or work in a different department, but it's going to creep back, most likely.

So if you're miserable, if you're a miserable person, you can work anywhere and still be a miserable person.

Exactly. Thank you so much. And so what we want to do first is figure out how do I want to be? And then set goals from that. So just to kind of break it down, often, I think when we come up with our goals or what we want to achieve or what we want to do next, we're using what I call backward logic. So we're either determining where we want to go based on the opposite of a negative experience we have, or we choose something that sounds right, like that our parents tell us to do or that society tells us is important. So it's about money or about title or it's about things that sound right. But the thing is, what sounds right doesn't always make us feel right. And so what I encourage people to first actually do is to think about how do I want to be, how do I want to feel? And let that be the destination that you. You. You kind of see. And then you work backwards and figure out your goals from that. So the cool thing about that is that when you focus on how you want to be. So let's say it's creative or collaborating with people I'm inspired by or having freedom and flexibility of my schedule. When you focus on those things, what you start to realize is that there are actually infinite ways or more ways than you thought of to achieve that. And so what I encourage people, if you're feeling stuck or crappy in your place right now, let's get clear on that stuff first and see what you can do to influence your reality now, because there's actually more options and possibilities for you than you can see right now. And so. And also when you're. I'm going to, like, geek out when you're in a negative mindset and when things aren't going well. The problem is that our vision literally and figuratively is impacted. So we know from research that when you're experiencing negative emotions, you literally do not see the big picture. Like, your eyes do not scan an image all the way. Your eyes tend to focus on one particular part of an image, and the same thing with your reality. If you're in a negative place, there may be solutions, like right there, but you're not seeing them because you're cutting it off. Your emotions are cutting off those opportunities. So does that answer it does answer it.

In fact, it matches some of the advice that's in Game Changers. There's a law, never discover who you are, and it's that the people who've gone on to change the game in their respective fields generally don't just discover it. They decide who they want to be and then they move in that direction.

Yes.

So what's the difference then between someone saying, I'm not going to be a miserable person, Is that strategy going to work or is there a better way to do it?

Well, when you're framing how you want to be, I always encourage people, first of all, to do it in the positive. So it's right. So it's not, I don't want to be miserable. It's, I want to be content or I want to be peaceful or I want to be inspired or whatever it is. So then, yeah, I think that's totally legit. Like you, one thing that's missing when we set our one way that we easily slip, when we make, when we set goals is it's called moral licensing. So let's say we're on our way to kind of doing things that we really want to do, and maybe it's being on the bulletproof diet. Right. So, like, we're on the bulletproof diet, we're doing really well. Not having extra sugar, having our coffees, and then someone brings in a piece of chocolate cake that has a lot of white sugar and you've been on the diet for five days and you think, I've been really good, so I deserve to be a little bit bad. And that's called moral license. And the way that we can get out of moral, the way we can kind of hack our own brains and not give in to that temptation, which we all have, is by reminding ourselves of who we are, what kind of person we are. And so that's when it's really helpful to say, well, I'm the kind of person who can stick with my goals, or I'm the kind of person who is vital and strong and super, super healthy.

Isn't that like perfectionism by another name? Oh, I'm not the kind of person who would have the chocolate cake.

Yeah, that's a really good, I mean, that's a really good catch. This isn't about being perfect. In fact, when I make my mistakes, I'm always, I have to remind myself of like past experiences when I have been that person. Because I, I know that I'm not going to be that person 100% of the time. I know I'm gonna mess up. But every new second is a new moment to be who you want to be, so just kind of move on.

And that was one of the disruptive things about the bulletproof diet. Aside from the fact that it's like, hey, saturated fat has a role in your body. It was that it's presented as a roadmap. So you're always in a neighborhood and you're still the same person. And you're like, today I'm kind of in a skitsy neighborhood. But you can't really go off the roadmap because, well, you're going to be eating something and you just realize, okay, maybe I can move up in the world and move down in the world, but that it isn't so binary, right?

Yeah.

So then you can say, I'm going to become the kind of person who when I have a choice, I make the better choice, even if it's not the perfect choice. And I think it set a lot of people free. And this came from my own experience as a 300 pound angry person going through that saying, I'm not going to eat the cookie. And then you just eat half the cookie by the end of the meeting because the meeting was so boring, you might as well eat the Cookie or whatever the other reason was. And then you're sort of like, God, what's wrong with me? Well, you know, I made a bad decision, but I didn't eat the whole cookie. Right. So I still made a better decision. This wasn't the best decision. And just having that framing for me was really helpful. And just realized there's going to be times when I quote cheat, but I could, you know, jump off a cliff cheat, or I could just, you know, do something that wasn't really as good as it could have been, but satisfied that craving for whatever it was. Is there a word for that in happiness research?

I call that appreciation. Like, because actually, one of the things I encourage my clients to do at the end of the day is once you've gotten clear on how you want to be and we distill that down into values, I ask my clients to check in on how did they actually perform on those values during that day. And so let's say if one of your choices is to be healthy or be bulletproof, then you can ask yourself, in what ways was I bulletproof today? And I would say that eating half the cookie instead of the whole cookie was your way of expressing that value. So it's about appreciating what progress you're making and not judging the progress. So that I think really sets a lot of people free. Like it set you free. It's like, I'm not going to judge how much I did, or like, maybe I didn't change the whole world today, but I made these few choices that were in alignment with how I wanted to be.

Yeah. So you can find something to be grateful for. And, you know, and I think our listeners have probably heard, but maybe haven't heard recently, this idea that we're heavily biased towards avoiding negative things because the way we're wired, negative things might be a tiger that would eat you and then you're dead. So you should really over bias that. But then it's so easy to forget the positive things. So, yes, you ate the chocolate cake or whatever, but you might have also, you know, saved someone from a burning building. But you're probably going to remember the chocolate cake more than the burning building, unless you also got burned. And I guess that just sucks. Is there anything we can do programmatically or like you're saying in the evening that allows people to better remember the good stuff and to maybe devalue the bad stuff? Do you have anything besides what you just mentioned?

Yes. Well, that's negativity bias that you're Talking about. And so we have to hack the negativity bias. And so the way that. So one of the exercises is to really reflect and appreciate, you know, what are those things that you did? And it's like a muscle, you know, when you practice, you will literally start seeing more and more, more ways that you are expressing your values, more ways that you're being who you want to be. I do also, I do a loving kindness meditation. I actually do it in the morning, not in the evening. And, and so when I wake up, what I will do. And for those of you guys who don't know what loving kindness meditation is, it's a Buddhist practice which basically is just you're wishing other people well and you're wishing yourself well. And I really love it as a go to, especially when I have a hard time just being quiet. It's a form of meditation where I can like focus my thoughts but also have them like beam goodness. So it kind of does two things at once. And I do find when I do this that I have a much better day. I find strangers like smiling at me more. I get like free things randomly. It's just if I really plug into my loving kindness meditation, it really unlocks a lot of stuff and there's a lot I can, a lot more we can get into about it.

But do you teach, do you teach your clients when you're working with a senior executive? Do you say, all right, wake up in the morning and beam loving kindness at the world?

I actually do.

How do they respond to that?

We're usually in it and it usually comes up because they're dealing with a toxic work environment or they're dealing with a very difficult personality. And so they just, they've tried everything, they've tried to have conversations with this person, they've talked to other leaders about this person, and this person's making their life miserable. And before I recommend, before you have any additional big conversations or moments with this person, the one thing that I recommend people do is to do a loving kindness meditation. And I know it sounds really woo.

Woo and whatever on that person specifically, like send that person.

I include them. Okay, I include them. So the way it works, a loving kindness meditation is you usually, like, you start thinking about someone who is very easy for you to love. So for me, I think about my daughter, so I envision her. And then what I'll do is I'll, you know, may you be healthy, may you be happy, may you be safe, may you be free to be yourself. Like, whatever you can come up with your own combo of, like, well wishes.

Like, maybe free to be yourself at some other company.

No, I want you to feel true to who you are. That's what I mean. Because I think that's so important for us. And then I will. Then I'll shift my attention to, like, my husband or I'll shift it to whoever. And then I'll go person by person. I'll do my team. And then I'll kind of, just because it's going to take forever, I'll start collectively envisioning people. So I'll do like a group. And then what I'll do is I'll anybody who I encounter. So I did this for you, Dave. I did this for all the listeners. So I really just. I try to envision, like, really beaming goodness and the reason why it's so important, and I recommend it. First of all, there's research on this that it can actually transform. Take in six weeks of doing loving kindness meditation. You have greater life satisfaction. You can reverse signs of depression. So there's all this great research on it. But also how it's so important is that our emotions are contagious, right? There's something called emotional contagion. So, like, your emotions just, like if you sneeze and you can spread the flu, your mood can be transmitted to others. And so if you're having a hard time with someone, I always want my clients to be what I call, like, immune to the toxicity. And the best way for you to do that is one, to be clear on who you want to be. Because if you're not clear on that, then it's very easy to get lost in all the stuff. Because if someone's toxic or they have stuff going on, that stuff penetrates you. And then you can't tell, is this mine or is this theirs? And you start to question yourself.

I think everyone listening has had at least one circumstance at work, at least if you've had a job where you have someone toxic. But what does that actually mean? Because I think different people might use that word, toxic in different levels. How do you know you're dealing with a toxic person? Or is it just someone you really don't like?

I think it's a toxic situation when you're not able to perform in the way that you want to perform. So you're debilitated in some way because maybe you're feeling emotionally unsafe around this person. You're feeling like whatever is happening between you is getting in the way of your showing up and being your best. And the thing is that we pay so much attention to what we consume, right? Especially your listeners, in terms of what we put in our bodies. But are we paying as much attention as to the people we're surrounding ourselves by and the thoughts and emotions we're having as a result of those interactions? And so I want people to be really conscious of, you know, there's also, we all have responsibilities, so sometimes we're contributing to whatever that situation is. And so I always encourage people to kind of look, how can I look at this differently? How might I take responsibility for my part? But I just think it's so important to, you know, the number one thing I talk about in communication is not what you say, but it's how you're saying it. And it's the energy that you're showing up with. And so if you want to break through that passive aggressive madness that you're having, or you want to really connect deeply or just power through regardless of the shit around you, then it's really important for you to be grounded in who do I want to be, how can I show up as that person? And how can I just blast this whole situation with love? And that's, I think, where really miraculous things start to happen and it gets really juicy. And I've seen my client, like I had a client who would literally schedule time in her day to cry because she was so miserable at work. She was a big executive. She is a big executive. She was at the company for 11 years, decided to go onto a different team because she wanted a new challenge. This boss ended up being a super micromanager. Suddenly she went from being this empowered leader to feeling extremely insecure and having no autonomous.