"What Your Body Knows About Happiness: How to Use Your Body to Change Your Mind" with NY Times Best Seller Janice Kaplan

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This is a first on TFR, This Feels Right Podcast. This is our first New York Times bestselling author, and that author is Janice Kaplan. And the book is also the same title as our episode, What Your Body Knows About Happiness: How to Use Your Body to Change Your Mind. And this is a Fascinating as we go into the mind and body connection. And in this episode, Janice is going to share with us how to uncover your physical experiences and environment and how this dramatically influences your mindset, your decisions, and your leadership potential. Now, as I said, it's a New York Times bestseller. It's Janice Kaplan, who's also a journalist, TV producer, and author of 15 popular books including the New York Times bestseller— maybe you've read it— The Gratitude Diaries and The Genius of Women. Janice was also the editor-in-chief of Parade magazine and the creator and executive producer of more than 30 primetime network television specials. And she's appeared regularly on national TV shows including Today and Good Morning America. And you can find Janice not only speaking on numerous radio shows and podcasts but also speaking at events around the country. So again, the book is What Your Body Knows About Happiness: How to Use Your Body to Change Your It's available everywhere that you buy books. All right, let's meet Janice now and find a bit more about the science of happiness and how your body can shape your mind.

Thank you so much for being a guest on TFR. This feels right. Now, I know you spend a lot of time in broadcasting, so I'm just wondering, did you ever do like a vocal warmup before you went on the air?

Vocal warmup? No, I probably should though. It's early morning. I haven't been talking that much, so I probably should have tried that.

Well, we had it. We had a pre-chat, but, but did you ever— did you ever have a vocal warm-up technique when you were— before you went on the air?

Um, no, I didn't do that. I usually tend to try to be really prepared though and know what I want to say, so that kind of takes away all the anxiety and you're just ready to go.

Well, speaking of ready to go, welcome. So welcome to the show. We're gonna be talking about your book, which is, as you said, is picking up from your New York Times bestseller Gratitude Diaries and what your body knows about happiness. and I'll get the right subtitle here, How to Use Your Body to Change Your Mind. And I'm fascinated by how to use your body to change your mind. I think that's a big part of the book. So maybe you could tell us a bit about that, and then we're gonna talk a little bit about fight or flight a little bit later and some of the sort of subtitles or the chapters in the book. But what—

how to use your body to change your mind is a fascinating topic. Share with us.

Well, thank you. I mean, you know, when I wrote The Gratitude Diaries, my concept was that you could always reframe a situation. You could use gratitude attitude to make yourself stop when you are unhappy, to see things differently, to find the positive in any situation. But then I started to realize that there are times, and you know this, that there are times that you just naturally feel good and you go, what happened there? Why is it that I didn't need to use any of my tricks? I didn't need to tell myself anything. Why am I just feeling good on this maybe bright sunny day or whatever it is that's happening? And I started to realize that our bodies are constantly sending messages to our minds that we're not always aware of. You know, we think of our mind as being the great computer that's always telling us what to do and that's in control of everything. But the truth is that your brain is this 3-pound mass that's sitting in this very dark skull, and it's not getting any information or ideas on its own. It's only taking in what the messages are from your body. And sometimes it takes them in and it misinterprets them. And sometimes it takes them in and changes how you feel. about things. And so I realized the power of recognizing that body-mind partnership in how it could change really just everything in your life.

Yeah, and, and we, we all would love— it's almost like, like the well of magic here, so we would love to be able to tap into that. So what are some conscious— do we have— is it conscious things that we do, or how do we, how do we trigger this?

Well, it works both ways. One of the studies that first got me intrigued with this subject is a study that came out of Yale that a professor of psychology named John Barge did. And he had people holding either a warm cup of coffee or an iced coffee.

Mm-hmm.

And then he invited them into his lab and he gave them descriptions of people and asked them their impressions of the people. And it turned out that the people who had been holding the warm coffee described the people as being warmer and kinder than the people who had been holding the iced coffee. And this seems absolutely crazy, doesn't it? But our bodies and minds tend to think in metaphors. And there's been all sorts of research that has followed up on this. There was a study done by Jonathan Ackerman, who's now at the University of Michigan, where he had people sitting on hard chairs and soft chairs. And this is really important for the business folks who follow you, Joel. The people who sat on the hard chairs were harder negotiators than the people who sat on the soft chairs. Maybe, you know, soft chair, soft heart. And again, these are not things that we would recognize. There was another study where people were given resumes to evaluate. Now, that's a pretty standard psychological study. And if I gave that to you, you would be— you would think, aha, they're testing me for unconscious bias. I'm going to make sure that I'm not judging this on the name of the person or where they live or anything like that. What you might not think about is the weight of the clipboard that the resume is on.

Ah.

And it turned out that the people who had their resumes on heavy clipboards were judged to be more serious and better candidates than the people whose resumes were on light clipboards. Again, somehow our body is sending that message of a heavyweight, and your brain is taking that. This is heaviness, this is solid, and your brain is taking that and misattributing it to the actual resume. So I just find these things really fascinating.

Yeah.

Things that are, yes, they are unconscious, but once Once we're aware of them, they become conscious and they become things that we can start to change.

Well, it's interesting because you were, you know, you were saying even at the beginning how you prepare, like you weren't— when you were broadcasting, you wouldn't do a vocal warm-up, but you were very clear on what you wanted to accomplish. You're very well prepared. So going back to that, is there anything that you would have told a broadcaster journalist or reporter journalist to maybe Help with your body to trigger your mind or make the other person feel more comfortable, as an example?

Well, sure. I used to find that when I was on the air or if I was giving a big talk, I would, like most people, get nervous. My body would tell— my chest would start pounding. And sometimes, often, I was on a lot of morning shows and I would feel fine. I'd be perfectly happy. All of a sudden they would say, you know, rolling, or, you know, do the countdown, and all of a sudden my heart would start pounding. pounding, and then your voice gets a little bit shaky. And then once your voice gets shaky, you go, oh gosh, you know, this is completely out of control now. And it just gets worse and worse and worse. So eventually I learned that if I could just get through that first 30 seconds, it would get better. And when I was doing this book, I learned another trick that I think is really wonderful, which is that you can't fake out your body.

Mm-hmm.

So if you try to tell yourself, oh no, I'm perfectly calm, and that chest is pounding and the hands are sweaty, your mind is going, you know what? You are not calm. I'm sorry. I can tell you are not calm. But what you can do is try to figure out what are the same emotions that accompany those other physical symptoms you're experiencing. So that pounding heart and those sweaty palms—

Hmm.

Can also be excitement. That doesn't just have to be that you're nervous. And so that's something that I started to use when I would be going out to give a talk and I'd feel myself getting a little anxious. I would think, Wow, I'm really excited to be doing this. This is great. I'm getting to talk to all of these people. I'm so excited. There's this big audience out there. I get to talk about my book. I get to meet all these people. And that little bit of reframing to your mind actually works surprisingly well because your brain buys it. Your brain goes, yep, I guess that sounds just about right because that could be why you're having those physical symptoms. So I think that kind of recognizing that you can't outsmart your body, you You can't tell yourself you're calm when your body is not calm, but you can find another way of looking at it.

Yeah. So is changing the language from, I'm really nervous, to, I'm really excited, would this be— I mean, like you said, I'm really excited that I get to present and get to speak to all these people. Is that part of being grateful?

Well, gratitude has so many different kinds of resonances. Yes, in many ways, the way I've always used gratitude is to try to find the positive in any situation. So that's interesting. I think in a way it is, it is doing the same thing with your body that you do with your mind and saying like, let's look at the positive of this. No, it doesn't have to be that I'm nervous. It could be that I'm excited. Just like when you are in a difficult situation of any kind or you're feeling really down about something, Make yourself stop and make yourself think, what's good about this? How am I going to feel about this? I often tell people, especially in business when they're having a really bad day or going through just a terrible situation. I speak to some young people who are telling me they want to quit their job, it's so miserable. And I say, okay, think about how you're going to feel about this a year from now. You're going to look back and you're going to remember, wow, I had this great internship or I had this great first role or whatever it may be that you're in. You're not going to remember that you had one lousy You're not going to remember that, you know, somebody yelled at you or you spilled the coffee. So try to get that broader perspective. I think sometimes if we can see in the moment the things that we normally see only in the rearview mirror, we can get a much better perspective on the good things that are actually happening in our lives.

Well, as you say, the good things that are happening in our lives and perspective. One of your chapters is Why Does Wine Taste Better in Paris? So maybe, so maybe share that. So basically we're drinking the same bottle of wine in New York or Toronto, but then we drink it in Paris and somehow it tastes better.

Isn't that wonderful? And it's absolutely true. And the research shows that it's true. And it's because we think that we see what we see and taste what we taste. And what you taste there in Toronto should be the same as what I taste in New York or in Paris. But it's not because there's a professor I spoke to at the University of Oxford, or is it Oxford University? Forgive me, at Oxford.

Yeah, just one word, like Cher, one word.

Yeah. named Charles Spence, and he's done some fascinating work on what he calls multisensory experiences and the fact that all of our senses are constantly feeding our brain and our brain is absorbing all of them. So when you think you're drinking that wine in Paris, you're also drinking in the atmosphere of the charming café that you're in and the fact that you're in the most romantic city in the world and that there's something wonderful about the atmosphere. And all of that is contributing to how you think of the wine. And you start to think that all of those things have to do with the wine when they really don't. And Professor Spence did some wonderful research where he actually— he did it with both wine and whiskey. But my favorite one is he gave people glasses of whiskey and he had 4 different rooms set up and they had completely different atmospheres with different lighting, different scenery. And he had the people walk from room to room. And then at the end of their experience in each room, they filled out what they thought of the whiskey.

Right.

And in each room, they described the whiskey differently. When they were in a room that was very grassy and rural feeling, they described it as having grassy tastes. And the lighting changed how they did it. And he said what was fascinating was that they were holding the same glass the whole time. They knew it. And at the end, it wasn't that they had been tricked. It was that they were tricking themselves. And it became very clear how the atmosphere, the places that we are, the experiences that we're having change how we feel, taste, or see things.

You know, when you say that, that totally makes sense because I know when I go to Montreal, for example, which is very French-speaking, and when I have like a café au lait or croissant, somehow it just— it's like always I would come back and I tell my— oh, this was the best coffee I ever had, that was the best croissant I ever had, and it It was, you know, probably the same I could have in Toronto or New York. But somehow it just— it's exactly what you said. It's like I've already sold myself on it.

That's right. Now I have the same experience every time I'm in Europe. I say, why is their cappuccino so much better? It's because you're supposed to drink cappuccino at that charming little, little square when you're in Europe. Professor Spence actually did a paper that he called the Provençal Rosé Paradox, and it was People go to the south of France and they think the rosé wine is so wonderful. And it's probably not the rosé wine. It's probably the south of France.

It's the same one you buy at the convenience store in the States.

Right.

So, you know, as we're talking about sensories and everything, you know, I'm going to be going to deliver a workshop next weekend. One of the topics they really want to talk about is fight or flight. And this is really making me think about What are some ways that I can, I can help these, these people? These are leaders and they're, you know, they get into difficult conversations and kind of like you're talking about, we go into a dark alley and we sense danger and already our heart is racing. So share with us a little bit about maybe what our body or, or whatever else can help us with, with fight or flight.

Yeah, well, I think some of it is what we were just saying before with that idea of trying to reframe what's happening. So to try to take it away from being a negative. We tend to think of stress as being something negative. We hear all these terrible things about stress. Stress is also a positive. Stress is a way of saying, I want to do my very best here. And there is another professor who I spoke to who's been doing a lot of work on helping people think about stress in different ways. And that same kind of reframing we were just talking about before He did it with students who were about to take their business exams. And, and he had them think about the stress they were feeling in a positive way and go through some experience of being told that you will do better if you're feeling a little bit tense, because that gets you revved up and that gets you ready to go. And they actually did do better after that. than they had done previously. And it lasted for a couple of months until they actually took the real exam. He had them doing, obviously, a practice exam in his lab. And so if you stop thinking of stress as only being something that's dangerous and bad and that's hurtful to you, and you start thinking of it as something that has always been a survival tactic for us to say, this is important, I'm revved up and eager to do this.

Mm-hmm.

And that's true whether you're in business or whether you're You know, giving a toast at a wedding.

Yeah.

If you're feeling that fight or flight when you're about to give a toast, it's because you care about the people who are there, right? And it's because you want them to feel good about what you're saying. And maybe that will help you give a better toast, or maybe that will help you give a better speech to the team that you're working with at your office. So I think that we do ourselves a bit of a disservice to only think of stress as being a negative. And, you know, we always hear, oh, I'm so stressed, and it would be nice if somebody said, that's great.

Yeah.

Doing something that's really important and that you're really excited about.

You're alive.

Yeah.

Because the stakes are high, so this is important to you. It's true because whenever I'm going to do something sort of eventful, I'm, you know, I'm always nervous, and my wife will be like, you've done this so many times, why are you still nervous? And Like, it's exactly that because I'm— I really want to do well and, and I do better almost under pressure because, uh, I, I guess after years of doing it, you become better at dealing with the pressure. Is that, is that something you felt that you dealt with? Because you've been— you've had a lot of high positions, you've been on TV a lot. Do you find that you sort of got better at, at zoning in when the, when the, the sort of spotlight moment came?

You know, I think you're right though, that you do still every time, no matter how many times you've done it, you want to do it right. And I think that's a good thing. I think if you get complacent, you're not giving your best every time. So I, you know, I can give the same speech 10 times, but I will reread my notes each time. And each time, you know, before I will go someplace quiet for 10 minutes before I'm about to do it, just to kind of run through it.

Yeah.

in my mind. And I think it's important to do that. So I don't think being complacent about it is necessarily a good thing. I think having that excitement, that sense of something being important, can lead you to do your best.

Yeah, I agree. Absolutely. And it is, it's taking that 10 minutes to sort of reframe where you're at and go over your notes so that you really feel prepared. Absolutely. And so speaking of that, If you don't mind, let's just take a few minutes and then I'm going to ask you about your experience in a leadership role as you were the chief editor at Parade Magazine. Would that be the correct title?

Editor-in-chief.

Yeah, editor-in-chief. And maybe talk about maybe what, you know, maybe a couple of your sort of communication skills that you found were really helpful to you when you were in that leadership position. And then I'm going to ask you one sort of deep, meaningful question, and then we'll find out where we can find out more about you, Janice, and where we can find Gratitude Diaries and What Your Body Knows About Happiness. So let's start with the editor-in-chief of Parade magazine. What did you find was really helpful as far as communication skills go when you were in that leadership role?

Well, I had always been a journalist. I had been a TV producer. And I had not had big teams working for me before. And when I was at Parade, it was the largest magazine in America. We printed 35 million copies every week and so had 70, 75 million readers. readers, numbers that now seem absolutely crazy and sort of don't exist anymore.

Those are TikTok numbers.

Yeah, right. I actually had a fairly small team. And I just treated them— I just acted the way I am, which is I'm warm to people, and I care about people. And I learned to appreciate what they each did. And And I had a huge disagreement with the CEO of the company, which maybe you're not supposed to do. But he was an older guy and he was a former Marine and he had very strict ideas about how a company should run. And so, you know, he checked in what— we had whatever office hours we had and he checked in what time people came in and what time they left. And I had, for example, an art director who I had just hired. who was a wonderfully creative young woman, and she would work as late as I wanted. She would be there all night if I wanted to redo covers, and then she would usually go out partying or doing whatever wild young women in New York do. And she liked to come in late in the morning, and I was always fighting for her. What possible difference does it make what time she comes in and leaves, as long as she's giving me—

Yeah.

These fabulous layouts and these fabulous covers? And so I really felt that I cared about people as, as individuals. And I think I hadn't yet written the gratitude diaries back then, but I think my sense of appreciating people and trying to let people know that they were appreciated was pretty natural to me then. And I think if I did anything particularly well, it was letting people know that they were appreciated. And also, one final thing is I tried to give people a fair amount— obviously, as I explained with the art director, I tried to give people a fair amount ability to express their own individuality. And when you're editing a piece, a lot of times editors like myself have a very specific way that you would want to do it. And I remember getting a piece back from one of my younger editors and reading it, and I went to her and I said, this is not how I would have done it, but there are a million different ways to edit a piece, and this is perfectly good, and I like what you did, and let's stick with that. And she was sort of shocked, and she said, well, do you want me to read do it? And I said, no, just because it's not the way I would necessarily do it doesn't mean it's not right. And we can have lots of different styles in the magazine. And I think giving people that sense that, that they have some control over what they're doing, they are appreciated for what they do and for their skills and their talents is really important.

Janice, I think every employee right now is like shedding a tear going, please be my boss. Please be my manager. Because What you're saying is at the heart of what anybody wants is they want to— every human being, we want to feel seen and heard and validated and know that we have— our talent is being recognized, whatever our talent is. And so I love that you fought for the person that didn't fit into the 9 to 5, but they were getting the work done. And that's— isn't that the most important thing?

Right. And, you know, I assume some of that has changed now that so many more people are working remotely. But I think a lot of leaders still feel like Things better be done my way. And I actually think that's kind of a weakness. I think you're much stronger if you give people their own power and let them do what they do best. If you've hired the right people, give them some running room and see what they can do. And they will perform better for you if they know they're being appreciated for what they do and who they are.

Absolutely. I think that's so important. All right, Janice, here we go. Let's ask the deep and meaningful question here, and then we'll find out a little bit more about where to find you and find your books. You've had an incredible career— author, reporter, editor-in-chief, I'm sure other things. But what advice would you give to a college student? So a college student who's going to be entering the workforce, and I mean, And you've obviously taken a lot of risks. You've stood your ground, example, with the CEO. What advice would you give to a college student, someone entering the workforce?

I would say to be open to the opportunities that present themselves to you. Don't always have a specific idea of what the direct way is to reach a particular goal, because the life path that you set is often not the one that you end up taking and is often not the one that's possible. So, so be open to possibilities, be open to opportunities. I think there are so many opportunities out there that people don't see. And so if something comes your way, be willing to say, sure, why not?

Yeah.

I'll try that. And be willing to bet on yourself. Be willing to say, I'm good at this, and, and I'm going to give it a try. I think particularly for young women, May I say, we often don't believe in ourselves and we often get scared and think, I'd just better do what somebody else tells me. And if we're open to the opportunities but also believe in ourselves to go ahead and do what we can, I think there are always unexpected paths that open up.

Say yes and bet on yourself. That's my takeaway from that. And I asked about college students because basically this is applicable to everybody wherever you are at in your life or in your career. To basically to say yes to opportunities and to continuously remind, you know, to bet on yourself. And as you were talking about appreciation, maybe you're not getting the appreciation from your colleague or from your manager, but find it within yourself to be able to bet on yourself.

I love that.

Janice, this has been terrific. So before we let you go, where can we find your books? Where can we find out more about you or get in contact with you?

Well, the new book, as you said, is What Your Body Knows About Happiness, and it's on Amazon and Barnes Noble and should be at your local bookstore. It comes— it actually comes out the first week in January, so you can preorder it now or ask your bookstore to get it in. What Your Body Knows About Happiness. And I think it's, it's a fun, interesting, unexpected book that I think will be a good read, as they say, for your listeners and viewers. Yes. And my website is just janicekaplan.com. So You can contact me through there, read the book, come tell me what you think, tell me your stories. I'd love to hear from people.

Perfect. Janice, thank you so much for being a guest on TFR, This Feels Right.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for listening to this episode of TFR, This Feels Right.

And if this felt right, then please leave a review, comment, or ask us a question. And of course, we ask if you could kindly follow us so you don't miss an episode of Impactful Communication Skills. And speaking of Impactful Communication Skills, you can learn more at our website, thisfeelsright.ca. I'm your host, Joel Silverstone, and happy to connect with you on LinkedIn. And we'll see you on the next episode of TFR, This Feels Right.

Thank you.