Heroic Interview: Broadcasting Happiness with Michelle Gielan

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You're listening to Broadcasting Happiness, an Optimal living interview with Michelle Gielen and Brian Johnson. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to the Optimal Living Interview series. Today, I'm thrilled to be chatting with Michelle Gielen, the author of Broadcasting Happiness, subtitled the Science of Igniting and Sustaining Positive Changes. Michelle has a fascinating story and is a wonderful human being. Former CBS News anchor for a number of years, she then went on to pursue positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania under Martin Seligman, became a positive psychology researcher. She now works with Arianna Huffington, with her husband, Sean Achor, Power couple in the positive psychology world. And this book that we're going to talk about today is fantastic, kind of combining her background with media and broadcast journalism and. And positive psychology and positivity and happiness. So I'm really excited to explore ideas. I appreciate you taking the time. Michelle.

I'm so thrilled to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Yeah. Well, let's have some fun. Let's start at the top. I'd love to hear a little bit more about you and your background as it relates to the name of the book. So Broadcasting Happiness. Tell us about that.

It is the merging of my two worlds. So, as you mentioned, I was an anchor with CBS News, and I. I basically got tired of telling negative news stories. But more importantly, what I was most concerned with is how can we talk about negative news both on the news and around the dinner table or in our businesses in a way that leaves people feeling empowered and inspired to create positive change as opposed to feeling paralyzed, stuck, or decimated? And so what I ended up doing was leaving cvs. My friends thought I was completely insane because I worked so hard for that job, and I went to study positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. The thing is, though, while there, I had this epiphany about all of us, which is that we're all broadcasters. It's not some special power reserved for professional athletes or news anchors or politicians. All of us are constantly broadcasting information to other people. As parents, as colleagues, as friends. We are transmitting messages, sharing information. And what we choose to focus on not only influences other people, but also creates our lives. It either creates success or it holds us back, ultimately.

That's awesome. And I want to kind of start before we get into the specific stuff on some of the ideas from the book, although this is actually central to the book. Tell us about the three key kind of greatest predictors of success that you and Shawn have discovered working with. Is it. What is it? A third of the Fortune 100 you guys have worked with.

Yeah. We just feel so blessed to be able to bring this research to so many Fortune 500 companies and then also schools and organizations. And what we are really interested in is understanding our mindset, a person's mindset as they move throughout their day, and how it can be predictive of their long term levels of success. So we primarily looked at this in the work domain. And so what we found is that while we oftentimes hire and train based upon technical skills or past experiences, there are three much more valuable things if you really want to fuel success. The first is work optimism. It's the expectation of good things to happen and the belief that our behavior matters. The second one is we call it positive engagement. It's basically your story about stress. When a stress or a challenge hits your life, do you look at it like a challenge where your brain gets turned on to its highest potential or, or do you look at it as a threat where your brain goes into fight or flight and you get even more stressed out than you already were? And then the third one is this idea of support provision. Originally we were asking questions to find out how supportive an organization was of their employees. Because we think, oh well, if I'm to be successful, I need people around me supporting me and making sure I have the resources I need. Or a listening ear when I need one. When we flip those questions around to determine how supportive an individual is of their colleagues, of their family, of their friends, that's when we saw really predictive information and we've been able to quantify it. For instance, with that last metric, if you are in the top quartile, the top 25% of support provision. So you're the listening ear, you're helping out when people are falling behind on their work. For instance, those people at work are 40% more likely to get a promotion over the next year than than the people in the lowest quartile. So it's scientific proof that what you give is what you get.

Yeah, it's so powerful. So then to recap quickly, those three great predictors of success, Work optimism, basically good things happen. You call them visionary work optimists, the positive engagement individual in the face of challenges that can succeed is what they're saying to themselves. Right. And use it as fuel rather than being overwhelmed. And then I love the support provision that it's the support you give, not the support you receive that's most predictive of your overall achievement. That's fascinating.

And taken together, those three things we found account for 75% of long term job successes. So if you fuel any one of those, you're fueling your success in the long run as well.

That's amazing. And of course, you kind of weave those threads and instruct us how to do that throughout the book. Let's go to the first chapter in the First Big Idea, which was one of my favorites, Power Leads. Talk to us about that.

Yeah, this is my favorite too. Just because it's a two second behavioral change that has shown to be incredibly powerful. I think we often underestimate our power to influence other people. By leading with something positive and meaningful in a conversation, we can get other people to refocus their attention on the positive and meaningful and therefore fueling parts of our reality. So the power lead is starting off a conversation, an email, a meeting, a phone call, by saying something positive and meaningful. And it can be really simple. I mean, the next time someone asks you, hey, how are you? Instead of saying, I'm stressed, I'm tired. Oh, the boss is driving me nuts, which we've all done. If we can skip that and instead start in a positive and meaningful place like, I'm doing great. I had breakfast with my son this morning and he was being so funny. That takes the lead on the conversation. It encourages other people to match in kind. And ultimately, as a researcher, if I know just the first few words of the conversation, I can predict. I have a high level of a high degree of ability to predict the outcome of that conversation, which is amazing.

That how we start a conversation is so predictive of how it ends. You gave some great examples on meetings and parents and email. Can you give us an example of how, if I was leading a meeting, would use a power lead?

Yeah, we've all been in those meetings where someone starts on a sour note and it just goes downhill from there. So a meeting power lead would be something like. We worked with a guy out in California. He led a tech team. He started with three gratitudes. One thing he was grateful for about life in general, one about the team in general, and one thing he was grateful for about someone specific on the team. And he saw a significant increase in team cohesiveness. How people felt their levels of expressivity during the meeting because they felt comfortable and. And not to mention their productivity as well. When you come home, the first thing you say to your spouse, your significant other can set the tone for the evening. So instead of, hey, honey, how was your day? Or you come through the door, starting with your biggest stress, how about asking a leading question, which is what was the best part of your day? What was the part that you're most excited about? Same with your kids. What was the best part of your school day? What new cool thing did you learn? What that is doing is that's opening up a space for people to talk about the positive, to focus on it, but it's also scientifically training all of our brains to pay more attention to that part of our reality and ultimately catalog it more in the future. So the next time we get asked, we have something to say.

Yeah, that's so cool. And I just want to quote you really quickly. You talk about positivity and you say positivity is the world's most underutilized, naturally occurring resource available to fuel success and forward progress. So every moment, we have an opportunity to cultivate that. Or not. And I love the power lead as a way to do that. We're going to talk in a bit about rational optimism, and it's not about ignoring reality. It's about grounding it, Everything that's going on. So we'll get to that in a moment. But I want to hear about Twitter. Heart attacks and positive questions.

Oh, my goodness. So it's been really interesting to see some fascinating research coming out of the University of Pennsylvania that is looking at the words that people use on Twitter, split up geographically, and how predictive that is of heart disease and other medical issues that we can face. What they find is that the more words that people are using that are based in negativity, so anger, hatred, or angst, that the more those words show up for a city, for instance, on Twitter, the more likely those people are to experience serious diseases and sicknesses. So much so that there was even talk about doing away with a pretty basic medical survey. And they said we should just look on Twitter because it's more telling than anything.

Or just stay off Twitter entirely. Huh?

Oh, I know. Yeah. What's been so powerful to see is. So I'm doing a series of studies with Arianna Huffington that you mentioned off the top, and we found that just three minutes of negative news in the morning can lead to a 27% higher likelihood of reporting your day as unhappy six to eight hours later. So if you're starting your day by filling your head with anger on Twitter or helplessness on the news, because that's ultimately what a barrage of negative news stories is. It's telling your brain your behavior does not matter in the face of challenges. We're not talking about solutions. We're just talking about the problems. When we start with that, that negative mood and mindset sticks with us through the course of our days at work and our time with our families. And it absolutely has to influence our, not only our thinking, but our results as well.

That's crazy. Can you repeat the stats on that? And then I want to hear from you what you recommend we do to start the mornings.

Yeah. So this is so new. I didn't even get a chance to publish in the book because we literally just completed a study a couple months ago. Three minutes of negative news in the morning can lead to a 27% higher likelihood of reporting your day as unhappy six to eight hours later. But you know, and when we talk about recommendations, what's been even more powerful was I think the follow up study that we did, which is what we looked at, was pairing. If you're just. Okay. So if you're just going to read an article, for instance, about a problem, right, which is much like the news you read and see every day, or that article doesn't end with a problem but continues on to discuss potential or actual solutions that you could take right now there's a tremendous influence on the brain. So I'll give you an example. In this study in particular, we looked at hunger in America and we just either gave people a bunch of statistics about the fact that hunger is a rising problem here in the States and homelessness is an issue as well. The article for the experimental group was that same article. But then there was also five things you could do in your community right now, including raising money or donating to a food bank. Anyway, what we found was when we pair solutions with a discussion of problems, it influences creative problem solving and increases it by 20%. It also alleviates negative moods like irritability or hostility by 19 and 23%. What that tells us is that you can talk about the negative with your business teams, with your families, with your organizations, but. But you have to also pair it with a discussion of solutions that they could potentially take right now to help alleviate the situation.

That's awesome. That's a nice segue into rational optimism. So we're not talking about putting our head in the sand. And you had a funny story about that. But that idea of let's just ignore all negativity, we're talking about rational optimism here. Can you describe what that means?

Yeah, so my six year old niece said I've been ostrich sized to my room all day. And I was like, well that's not really a word, but I get where you're going with it. And then Sean and I joke. Sean went to Harvard. Both her parents went to Harvard, but they later went on to Yale. And that's why he says that she uses big words, but then she ends up misusing them. There's a little bit of rivalry, but anyway, I loved her word, ultimately, because we don't want to ostrich size our ourselves from reality, from the negative things that are happening in our world. Right. And a lot of people think, well, in order to maintain a modicum of happiness, that's sort of what I have to do. I got to remove myself from terrible news that's occurring around me. What we're finding now is that there's a significantly more productive path, and it's twofold. In the midst of good times and bad, we have to celebrate successes and progress because that is ultimately fuel for the brain. And then we have to pair. Anytime we talk about problems, we've got to pair it with a discussion of solutions. And through all that, we have to maintain rational optimism, which is a realistic assessment of the present moment. So we see the problems that are happening in our world, but we maintain a belief that our behavior matters in the face of those challenges, and we expect good things to happen. So we know that if we apply our behavior, if we work hard, if we band together, we can make a positive difference and ultimately spark and sustain that positive change.

And as part of the rational optimism. I loved your idea of fact checking. So Michelle weaves in the broadcasting side of things and her experience as the anchor with this positive psychology research. So one of the things for rational optimism was fact checking and finding fueling facts. I thought that was so cool. Can you describe that for us?

Yeah. So our brain hates it when we're wrong. Right. If you have an idea or you have a story and someone tries to dispute that, oh, that can be so challenging for us. So fact checking is where we say, okay, I'm stressing about something. I have ultimately then a story that I've concocted that is just not working for me. Right. So it can be a simple story like, I'm never going to finish this project in time, or my son's never going to graduate from high school. Meanwhile, he's eight years old. And. That's right. But either way, we've come up with a story, and if it's causing us stress, it's not working for us. It's based upon facts that might be absolutely true. The key with fact checking is how can we find another set of facts that don't necessarily disprove the original story because again, our brain hates that, but instead illuminates a new story. You do it in three steps. The first two should be easy. The third is where the stretch comes in. The first is isolating that negative or stressful thought. What is it? Just drill it down to one sentence and then list the facts that support that story. If you're stressing this is going to be easy. And then the third step is finding those fueling facts. So I'm never going to finish this project in time? Well, of course not. I'm exhausted, I've got a heavy workload, my colleagues are swamped, et cetera, et cetera. Right. The new list would be. Well, I've been at this company for four years and I've actually never needed a deadline extension. Three of my colleagues have offered to help me. Oh, wait, I have a template on my computer. I could use that as a launch point. I handed in a similar proposal last week and it was well received. I've got some idea of how to do, you know. And then all of a sudden, your brain starts to see all these resources, successes, wins, connections that you can leverage and that help us move from that place where we're stuck to a place where we're empowered and activated.

That's so cool. It's kind of similar to the challenging negative thoughts, cognitive behavioral style. Right. Of let's be honest about what's going on, let's address the real facts and then let's not disprove ourselves, as you said, but find facts that might support a more positive narrative. Right?

Yes, absolutely. I put it in sort of broadcasting and journalistic lingo, but it is, I think, ultimately, because it's based on this psychology research, it's down to the core of how our brain works. Are we focused on the hassles, complaints, problems, challenges, and all the things that are holding us back, or are we focusing on that, fueling part of our reality?

Right on. And then strategic retreats, another favorite theme. And you talked about. I just love the HALT metaphor acronym, rather. Can you walk us through that?

Yeah. So this is literally the number one question I get at talks, which is how do I deal with negative people? People. I gave a presentation at Google and this one woman who, she walks into the room and she's got all this energy and she's so positive. You can tell right away she tells me the most negative guy at my company was sitting near me. And then we restructured and he got closer. And then we restructured again and he's sitting in the cubicle next to me. And if we restructure one more time, he's going to be in my lap. And I just don't know how to deal with him because it's like he sucks energy out of me. So in strategic retreats, I devoted an entire chapter to how do you deal with those negative people? First and foremost, though, we got to check in with ourselves. And so I took this from addiction recovery programs that use a beautiful acronym. Halt. Are you hungry, angry, lonely or tired? And oftentimes. Oh, and by the way, you can also be hangry, which is a combination of hungry and angry.

That's my specialty.

Yeah, it's my specialty. But oftentimes, if you find you're one of those four, you can take a break, do what you need to do to alleviate those feelings, and then that helps us bolster our positive resources, which in turn helps us more effectively deal with those negative people.

And then what else do we do with negative people? This is good. So there's a take. Make sure we're well resourced. Right. Are we hungry? We angry? Are we. I'm missing the L. What's the L?

Lonely or tired?

Lonely, of course. Lonely or tired. Take care of yourself. You're not going to be functioning at your highest. It's not the time to engage with those negative people. Let's say we're resourced. Any other. What other tips?

Yeah. So, you know, I think a lot of people think, and I mean, I've caught myself so many times feeling this way is we feel this feeling of guilt, right? Oh, this person is in my life, they're being negative and yet, well, I should be nice to them or should deal with them. And what I think ends up happening is that there exists a creep in our boundaries. This person just invades our life more and more. The strategic retreat is about how you can take a retreat from this person in a meaningful way. Take a break. You bolster your own positive resources. You check in with yourself. You do your positive habits, like listing your gratitudes, or so I talk about some of those in the book. And then when you want to re enter, you plan what I call a two minute drill. So what's my two minute drill with this person so that I can engage with them? I don't have to fully disengage, but at the same point, I'm not letting their negativity ruin my life. I used a lot of examples in the work world. A guy who was dealing with a very negative colleague, he would come to the door of his office and say, hey, insert nice comment here, right? And then ask one question to get some information from the guy that he had to get in order to move forward with a project. Say one more nice thing, never sit down, never close the door to the office. And then he was gone. And that was it. So that was his two minute drill. You know, if you got to jump on the phone with your mother in law, what nice things can you say? What topics can you avoid? What can be your two minute drill so that you are protecting yourself and setting your boundaries?

I'm lucky. My mother in law is one of the most positive people I know.

I know. I kind of always hate using that example because I feel like first of all I hope she never listens because something. But also there's wonderful mother laws. I hope to one day be one that are absolutely wonderful.

That's awesome. I want to talk to you about a couple other things kind of outside of the book, but what of your favorite ideas did we not discuss?

Oh, so one thing that I think is really fun is this idea of activating the 31. We did a study with it's cross Industry with training magazine and we looked at how many people in any given organization are already positive, but they're not expressive of that positive mindset. And we found that it was 31% of people so that we call them the hidden 31. What I think is so transformative about that piece of information is that when I know that I'm sitting around a table in my office during a meeting and one in three people might already love my idea, but they're just not saying anything about it, that means that I don't need to convert those people. I just got to get them to speak up and support. Right. And so if you're trying to create a positive culture at your company, just getting those people to speak up and to be more positive can actually tip away from negativity to positivity. And the absolute best way to do it is by modeling positive behaviors yourself. So the more you use the power lead, the more you ask leading questions to get people to start thinking about the positive parts of their day. The more you help other people fact check their stories, the more that people are going to see that there is another path that they could follow and it'll hopefully tip the culture in your family or in your organization to be more positive.

That's awesome. Which reminds me of another one of your guys great books and a core part of your work, the Art Orange Frog. Can you tell us about that, yeah.

This is so fun. Right around the time when I met Sean, he was working on a business parable called the Orange Frog. But literally this book is perfect for 12 year olds. It's so much fun. It's a story about a frog who was originally green and then he was very optimistic and the more optimistic he became, the more orange he started to turn. And then he infected all the other frogs in the pond. It's a wonderful story that reminds us about the power that we have to influence others and to get through challenges. Some companies who've gone through this orange frog training have been so excited about it that they've literally painted the walls orange at their companies. There's this one woman at Nationwide Insurance who carries around a big stuffed orange frog in the elevator. She wants people to ask her about this training just so she can tell them what an experience she had and get them to sign up. And so it's just been a lot of fun. It gives more than anything, ultimately, I think it gives everyone the language around some of these positive psychology concepts so that you can say, hey, I'm being orange today, or you're not being so orange today or whatever allows them to talk about it.

That's awesome. Remind me, was it the orange frog? Was that the name of it?

Yep, the orange rug.

Okay, cool. So find that. We love it. I can't wait to have our son read that one. And then I want to ask you. I'm preparing for a class on Peak Performance 101. So as a news anchor, and obviously you continue to do stuff that I imagine challenges you and makes you nervous on occasion, etc. What did, if you experience that stuff, what did you do to put yourself in a state of that helped you perform at your best when you needed it the most?

Well, as a news anchor, I'd say I tried to keep focused on the excitement and rush of the job and the amazing things it afforded me. And the most amazing thing was getting to meet and interview incredible people, many of whom were at big moments of their lives. Right. I'd say though, the biggest lesson I learned in life that I actually used a lot while reporting was as a result of an experience I had when I was in my mid-20s, which was that I experienced a year long bout with depression. And in those times, what I decided to do, I kind of. I don't know how I found this way, but so I went to the gym. I absolutely believe in that. I started going when I hadn't been and then every time I had an Anxious thought. I started fact checking it. And I know depression is different for everybody, but for me, that was what made the difference. I would write out the list and fact check it, exactly what I described earlier. And it led me out of that experience and ultimately I think helped me be stronger. Because now when I come face to face with a negative, stressful, anxious thought, that habit is just. It's so much easier that I can say, oh, okay, I see what's happening. Maybe I'm hangry or maybe something's stressing me out, but I've got it. I think I can handle this a little bit better, I think, than had I been previously.

That's really powerful and I appreciate you sharing. And that leads to one of the second to final question I like to ask. So we're all about optimal living, optimizing our lives. I'd love if you could share. You mentioned exercise and the fact checking. What are your habits that help you stay plugged in these days that are most important for you, that you've discovered over the years?

I think the most important thing for me has been a gratitude, cultivating a sense of gratitude. And I know this is something we've heard from every major religious tradition and Oprah and, you know, everyone talks about it. So I think ultimately it's about making the practice right for you. And for me, what I found is, you know, it's writing out a gratitude list. I've been keeping a book ever since my son was born. I'm not too, too regular about it, but I'm trying. But I write down all the coolest things that he's doing and the funny things he said or whatever and put some pictures in there. And I think for me that has been just such a source of joy. So that's been really helpful. And it's ultimately, it's a form of practicing gratitude because these are all things I'm grateful for about him.

That's awesome. I'd love to swap stories. Can you give one example? I've got a funny one.

Oh. Of things he's done. Gosh, it's daily. He's hysterical. We had a whole. So he's two and a half. So he's just starting to put four and five and six words together in sentences. But we had a whole conversation the other day about a tent because we had this little sun tent and we set it up and he was like, oh, mommy, go inside. Oh, mommy, don't go inside. Because he didn't want me in there. He wanted to be by himself. Mommy, zipped it up. But she's like, I know, maybe it doesn't sound funny to anybody else, but for me it was just this hysterical experience. So I just, I adore him.

That's awesome. As you were sharing that I've got in my little calendar, I write down little funny things that Emerson says and I've got a couple of them. But the other day he's only three and a half and he's way too young to be thinking about her playing chess. But that's something I'm excited to, to do a little bit with him in the future. So I, I made it a kind of a fun deal. Let's go get a chessboard, you know, and telling him about it, it's got a board and you could put pieces on it. And I was describing to him the pieces getting him super excited. You know, it's got a, it's got a horsey and it's got this and that. He says, huge eyes. Will there be kitties? Are there kitties? That is awesome. Are there kitties? Oh, I love it. So thank you for letting me celebrate that gratitude. Just appreciating and savoring. And it's tied to progress too, right? Of just the fuel for life of appreciating how far we've come and where we are and all. That's awesome. What else? So gratitude is number one. What other things?

What else? Well, exercising, though I'm not as regular as I'd like to be. That's always a good mood booster. And then the habit that we've researched that literally every time I do, I get the biggest buzz off of and I should just do it all the time is this idea of emailing kind notes to people. So we've looked at this as far as if you were to send just a 2 minute note praising or thanking someone in your social support network, this could be a family member, friend, colleague, English teacher, soccer coach, whatever. And just two minutes to tell them why they're meaningful to you in your life. Send it off. If you do this for a period of 21 days, each day new and different, what that can do to the brain and what we've seen is that it just, it completely transforms your mind how optimistic you are, how good you feel. I've just had amazing stories from people of saying A. They get nice notes in return, which is always a good bonus. But that's not why we do it. But also they meaningfully activate their social support network. And since we, we know that social support is the greatest predictor of Long term levels of happiness that we have. This is the best investment that we can if we're trying to improve our levels of happiness. So I do it, I'll send three days in a row, then I take a break, then I send three more. And I mean, I just absolutely love it. And I realize how many people I have in my life that are incredible and tremendous.

Yeah, I just, I wrote a love letter to my wife the other day for her birthday and our ninth anniversary. Then for my mother, you know, more than just the normal, hey, mom just sat down and actually thought about how awesome she is. And it's amazing how just those two things spread over the last month or two in themselves are so fueling. And to imagine those simple two minute, let's just, you know, touch someone with our appreciation, that's really, really cool. Well, this is wonderful. I like to wrap up with the final question, which is if you could share just one piece of wisdom with people who are passionate about optimizing their lives, what would that be? It might be something we've touched on already. What would that be?

I would say that it's incredibly powerful to remember how we show up every day and we never know the influence that it can have. And I'll just share a really brief story. This guy that we talked with, he sold his company for $100 million and that night had an anxiety attack. So his wife said, you know what, let's just go for a walk, let's count our gratitudes, let's talk about some good stuff and get you out of your head. So they did it. He felt better, they repeated the next day. And the next day, two weeks later, he decided, well, if this is working so well for us, why don't we go ahead and import this to the dinner table. So he did. And he got his 5 year old thinking it was cute. The 13 year old girl rolling her eyes at saying gratitudes around the dinner table. But they did it. And anyway, two weeks later he gets a call from another dad. His 13 year old daughter had been at this guy's house for a sleepover and he says, I gotta talk to you about your daughter. He said, oh no, what did she do now? Well, guess what? Turned out that his daughter at the sleepover had gotten all the girls to sit down in a circle to start saying nice things about each other because the girls at school had been being meant to recently. Awesome, right? The wife started it, the husband brought it to the table, the 5 year old did it, and the 13 year old spread it to these girls, you never know the smallest positive habit and how you show up can transform others in significant ways.

That is super inspiring. And I realized if you have another moment, I'd love to hear you describe and I want to make sure we link to your site and also your transformative journalism. Michelle has a manifesto at the end on transformative journalism and the research that you're sharing in that is just stunning. You know, the power of positive broadcasting. Can you share a little bit on that and where people can learn more?

Sure. Basically, the idea of the journalist manifesto is that right now the news media and by reporting so much of the negative that's going on in the world without a discussion of solutions, they're ultimately holding back collective progress. And so if we can shift that conversation and report on solutions or potential or actual will actually ultimately fuel positive progress and make this world a better place, there's also financial incentive to do it because what we find is that ad revenue or ad effectiveness, so the likelihood to purchase of a product increases when you place an ad for that product next to that kind of good content as opposed to negative content. So what I did was I laid out a research based business case for news organizations. But ultimately this provides a path forward for journalists and for news consumers. How can you consume news that's going to fuel you as opposed to decimate you? So if anyone's interested in more information on that, that's@transformativejournalism.com and then for everyone else who is interested in those three greatest predictors that we talked about at the top of the conversation, you can actually take that 30 question assessment for free on our website. It's@broadcastinghappiness.com and I really encourage you to take it. You'll get your scores and an interpretive report.

That's great. So broadcastinghappiness.com was a transformativejournalism.com Correct. And then your personal site, michellegeuan G-I-E l a n.com Wonderful. I appreciate you and all you're doing.

Oh, same here. You're amazing, Brian. Thank you so much.

Hi, this is Brian. A lot of people don't know all the stuff I do beyond these free videos I share on YouTube. So I thought I'd do a quick video to give you an overview of our membership program that you can get access to and get a ton of other stuff. So here's a quick look. Ten bucks a month, join the Optimal Living Membership program. You get Instant Access to 250 Philosopher's Notes on some of the best optimal living books out there. Old school classics, positive psychology, modern stuff, Mindfulness, Peak performance, purpose, neuroscience, wealth, etc. And what you may not know is that in addition to the PNTV episodes, I create PDFs on all these great books. So six page PDFs. Let's take a look at one of them. Joseph Campbell, you want to figure out how to live your hero's journey? Well, this is a great place to start. I basically pull out my favorite big ideas, riff on them, connect them to other books and other ideas and help you apply this wisdom to your life today. That's what the PDF looks like again. We have 250 of these on all these different great books. And then I record those PDFs as an MP3 so you can listen to that MP3 while you're on a walk or working out or doing some errands or whatever that is. Philosopher's Notes. A lot going on there. And then in addition to Philosopher's Notes, you get access to optimal living classes. Optimal Living 101 idea here is that all those great teachers come back to the same big ideas again and again and again. I distill those ideas into classes. Super practical, fun, inspiring classes ranging from Habits101, Confidence101, Getting Stuff Done101, Meditation101, instant access to all those classes. And then Future classes include Relationships 101, Energy 101, Purpose 101 business goals, etc. Those are our full length classes. And then I create micro classes. Two to three to five minute little bursts of wisdom on my favorite great ideas from these great books across the domain that you want to optimize in your life. So we have dozens of these so far. I create 50 new micro classes every month and 10 new philosopher's notes every month for 10 bucks a month. So we're blessed to have thousands of members who are enjoying the program and sharing some incredibly kind words with us. And super simple 10 bucks a month cancel anytime. Would be honored to be a bigger part of your life and I appreciate your support. Here's to optimizing and actualizing.