S2 E6: Expanding the Idea of Happiness
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It is human nature to seek happiness in life, although philosophies, anecdotes, research, clinical experience, etc. has sought to determine what happiness is and how it might be actualized.
One thing that seems to ring true is that happiness is not something is guaranteed in life or on one’s journey toward excellence, regardless of one’s circumstances and experiences.
Given this, it is likely not enough to rely on one way of becoming fulfilled in life, and so it is helpful to expand the way in which happiness is understood and how we can feel fulfilled in life in various ways outside of relying on feeling good all the time.
Excellence is not just being the best at something or some lofty ideal of things needing to be perfect, it’s more about bringing the things together that we are good at, that feels purposeful, that is meaningful, and that we can hone to improve upon.
Trying to perfect being happy, or demanding that you should feel happy all the time can backfire.
There are a lot of factors that can contribute to mental health challenges and no one group of people are necessarily immune because we are all human and vulnerable.
Factors could involve aspects like predispositions, resources, health issues, traumas, substance use, the way one experiences systems they exist in, loneliness, etc.
As connected individuals are with social media there has also been a rise in loneliness.
This episode is not about ‘how to be happy’ because sometimes we just need to feel like we are ‘okay’.
It’s not clear what will lead someone (like a child) to feel happy and it may be much more complicated than a simple suggestion. It may not be just one thing at all given points in time.
It can be difficult to articulate in a more accurate way how we are feeling. It can be so much more than just the highs and lows of ‘happy’ or ‘sad’; ‘excited’ or ‘bored’; ‘depressed’ or ‘satisfied’, which can lead to an either-or, black-and-white mentality about our feelings.
Sometimes uncomfortable feelings are actually guiding us or giving us helpful information. Sometimes challenges bring out something within us that can be very meaningful in the long-run.
Various areas that can allow life to feel fulfilling beyond just ‘happiness’, based on various researchers like Carol Ryff, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, Martin Seligman, etc., include positive emotions (there are many!), meaning (how a person creates meaning in their life and experiences, etc.), growth (in self-awareness and development, etc.), engagement (being in the moment and absorbed in what you’re doing, etc.), and security (feeling safe psychologically, significant relationships, etc.).
The systems that surround an individual on various levels can support or bring down members of communities.
Check out the movie “Champions” as an example of learning from experience and ‘hard lessons’ how fulfillment in life can change and evolve over time.
Csikszentmihalyi says in his Flow book how relationships can manifest the best and worst of times.
Going through the motions day by day can prevent bonding and expanding what you perceive life has to offer, even if it takes creativity to find ways to engage, play, and bond.
Pausing to change the context to do something different to bond can help to change feelings.
See the book Flow by Dr. Csikszentmihalyi on the excellent research on how people feel across various aspects of day to day life.
Individuals can be afraid of opening up with others and people can feel like they wil always be misunderstood. Therapy can be a great space to open up in a way that feels less pressured, more open, and at a slower pace.
Reflecting and building self-awareness is not necessarily easy, especially when feeling badly or uncomfortable. It can help to have scaffolding, journaling, talking, and utilizing therapy to reflect in a more effective way.
Nostalgia can help to remind us that we can experience positive emotions like joy and revisit the elements that lead to it.
We can forget or lose touch with what we actually enjoy doing.
Both, concentrating and working toward a goal with feedback (may lead to self-esteem), as well as the freedom of play/creativity (may lead to enjoyment), are important in their own ways at different points in time.
Being happy all the time makes being happy lose its value. Uncomfortable emotions like sadness help us to identify what is important to us.
Rest is supportive of us doing hard work and replenishing our bodies and minds.
Living more intentionally can lead us to not feel guilty for resting or only feeling relief as the one positive emotion that is experienced.
Check out the book “The Power of Full Engagement” for tips on how to reconceptualize time management as energy management.
Self-regulation is not just an individual’s responsibility to do solely on their own; self-regulation comes from talking, relating, and reflecting with others.
Sometimes various symptoms, like feeling bad about ourselves or substance use, revolve around some core fear we are grappling with.
Sometimes our thoughts don’t just affect our feelings/emotions, but our feelings/emotions can also affect our thoughts.
Mourning losses through changes and finding ways to replace losses with something meaningful is a process of exploration and it takes time.
Adults in the lives of younger people, as well as employers and group leaders, can remember to infuse enjoyment and different aspects of happiness in the day to day so individuals are less likely to get burnt out.
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Gerald Reid 00:15
Welcome back, everybody to the Reid Conect-ED podcast. This season, we'll be talking a lot about the journeys of excellence. And there's something that many of us seek to find along the way of our journey of excellence, and perhaps we hope will be there at the end, like a pot of gold at the other side of the rainbow. And that I think, is happiness. You know, we all seek happiness in our lives, it's human nature to want to feel happy. And you know, certainly in the mental health world, we have people come to us hoping to feel better and to feel some sort of, you know, happiness, whatever that means to the person. And the questions that we have when we think of happiness is, is it something we can buy, as is something we can strive for. Can we grab it? There's been philosophies, theories, anecdotes, clinical experiences, even research that dives into answering these questions about what is happiness, and how do we achieve in our lives. And no matter how you look at it, there's one thing that seems to be consistently true. And wherever you're looking, and that is that on our journey towards excellence, there's really no guarantee that you're going to feel happy along the way, or even at the end of the road, that happiness really is not a guarantee in life, regardless of one's circumstances, regardless of one's successes, regardless of one's good fortune. And so it really begs the question that this episode is gonna tackle. If happiness is not guaranteed in one's journey towards excellence, then what can we prioritize instead of just this idea of happiness? Or better yet, can we expand what it means to be happy? And only relying on one way of being fulfilled in life is not likely enough. And so we're going to try to expand what it means to be happy and to broaden and deepen that idea a bit more. Because if we're really focusing on one idea of happiness, it can lead us to feel trapped, disappointed, weakened, and so forth. So in this episode, we're going to discuss psychological concepts, personal experiences, in our work with individuals. And some of the ideas will come from areas of positive psychology, other areas of psychology, positive youth development, you know, some wonderful people in the field like Seligman, Csikszentmihalyi, Carol Riff, and and others in the field. So really looking forward to this discussion, Lex.
Alexis Reid 02:23
Yeah, thank you. And before we get started, I kind of want to break down this word excellence, because it sounds like a lofty goal, right? I want to be excellent. But really, when you when you break it down, and when I work with strategic learners, it's about like, what are the roots there? What are the parts of the word that help us figure out its meaning. And really, when you break it down, excellence is about excelling, right? Being able to be good at something to be able to find your passion, work towards mastery, and really feel like you have some agency in what you're doing. So when we talk about excellence, it's not this lofty ideal of things need to be perfect, right? As we talked about in the perfectionism episode, it's more about are we kind of bringing all the things together that we're good at, that we enjoy, that feels purposeful, to be a part of our life, that is really what we do and what we embody as we navigate through this life of ours.
Gerald Reid 03:21
Definitely, yeah.
Gerald Reid 03:21
And you mentioned perfectionism. And I can tell you, sometimes I work with people who have perfectionism. And when we talk about what's going to bring you happiness in your life, we can we think about that. And I gotta tell you, sometimes they want to perfect being happy. And that's really counterproductive, because, you know, there's actually been some research that I dove into, during my graduate training around this area. You know, one thing that did stand out to me is that there's been some research that the more people kind of latch on to this idea of, I have to be happy, I have to be happy and attached to it. It really kind of backfires. And so this episode, we want to we want to expand what it means to be happy and expand the idea. So you know, why is this important? Look, I mean, everybody on Earth is vulnerable, because we're human, and we can deal with mental health challenges. Anybody is vulnerable. There's no group of people, there's no individual that's, you know, going to be immune to having mental health challenges we all have, let's start with predispositions. Everybody's predisposed to something. It can manifest in different ways. You know, you can have too little resources, you can have too much support, too little support. What does it mean to have too much support, you can feel like maybe you're being controlled in some ways and you're not kind of developing your own trust in yourself where you can have too little support, you feel like you're just kind of drowning. Health issues can affect literally anybody, anybody can be prone to health issues, traumas substance use, you know, you're in the educational world. You know, there's diversity in people's experience with education, learning disabilities, or not feeling like you're a good fit in the school system in which you're in or You know, your strengths are not being acknowledged or your weaknesses are not being, you know, understood. Loneliness is an epidemic and in society nowadays, you know, a lot of people talk about that you can even be with people and still feel lonely. Like, that's, you know, it's a scary thing when like, you know, loneliness is like a plague in some ways. And as much as we're connected through social media, you look at the research and loneliness has increased. And that's a strange irony, you know?
Alexis Reid 03:21
Yeah, it's like we're alone together more than ever.
Gerald Reid 05:29
Yeah. That's the book by the MIT researcher. Yeah. Terkel, Sherry Turkle. Yeah, yeah, Sherry Turkle, she does wonderful, you know, writing on this topic.
Alexis Reid 05:39
So that's a great foundation for us to work from. And do we have like, 20-30 hours to talk about it all?
Gerald Reid 05:46
People have been discussing this forever, right?
Alexis Reid 05:49
Yeah. And, you know, we're gonna keep it concise. But I also wanted to, before we really dive into all this, establish a caveat that we're not here to talk about how to become happy, either, right? We really want to kind of break down this idea of, we just need to be happy to be well, because I think that is a huge, you know, misconception in our world. And and I'm going to bring it back to what I know best is that a lot of educators and a lot of parents and caregivers that I work with will ultimately say, you know, I'll ask them the question, what are your goals? What do you want for your child? What are we really working towards? What's the ultimate goal? And a lot of times, they'll say, I just want them to be happy. And I often will press pause and kind of get them to dig a little deeper into that. Because what is happiness? Sometimes happiness is just like, going through life, coasting, right? Or like,
Gerald Reid 06:43
it's unclear what's going to make the child happy, right. And it's, it's not a it's not like an A plus B equals C.
Alexis Reid 06:49
Yeah. Right. And I think that's, that's really what I'm trying to get to is helping them to understand and unpack what happiness is, because it's not one thing. And it's not like a switch that you can turn on for anybody to feel, quote, unquote, happy. There's so many factors that are involved. And that's really what we're going to discuss and dive into. But I want us to just be careful about how we throw these terms around. And, you know, I've said this so many times throughout my career, and since I learned about it in graduate school, around Jerome Kagan's work about emotions, he has this beautiful book of what is emotion. And he talks about how, in the English language especially we don't have enough terminology to really discuss and describe the intricacies of emotion, that we we often fall in the all or nothing mentality where we're like, are either happy or sad. We are either depressed, or we're content like there's no in between, or gradient levels of emotion that we frequently use, in our vernacular, at least in the English language to talk about emotion. And I think that's so debilitating in our own lives and for our mental health, too. So when we think about happiness, it's the same as being smart, right? I've talked about smart and smart goals before on the podcast that if you're not smart than what are you, you know, there's a lot of terms that different learners might use, but it's the absence of being smart. So if you're not happy, what are you it's absence of happiness.
Gerald Reid 08:17
Yeah, I love what you're saying. And it's so I think it's such an accurate way of describing this. And as a therapist, that one of the best parts of therapy, right people can come to me, and they want to feel better. And, and again, that A plus B equals C, let's say C is feeling better, feeling happy, whatever that means. And maybe a and b, let's say are, you know, developing relationships or feeling better about yourself, those those are, you know, tried and true ideas of what can make people happy. But I'm not just going to say to them, Hey, a plus b equals c. So go live out the formula. My job as a therapist is to understand there's, there's maybe a lot more that goes into that for that person, first of all, for self discovery, to understand what gets in the way, what helps with these aspects, A plus B equals C, and it could be a times two, plus b divided by three, to the nth degree degree, right, there's just there's way more to the formula, and therapy, it's one of my favorite and most meaningful parts of therapy is to get to know the person, their life, their story, their personality aspects of what makes them who they are, that that A plus B equals C is way more intricate, in way more sustaining for themselves over the long term that they can develop this insight awareness and growth, that it's not just you know, go do a plus b equals c but it's it's much more meaningful in that way and that's what this episode is gonna we're gonna talk about a lot more that goes into you know, understanding yourself and what makes you can feel fulfilled in life.
Alexis Reid 09:53
Yeah, and I like to talk about not even the equals something because depending on the day, depending on the car Tech's depending on the weather, sometimes it might determine what that outcome is. And I always say like, what are we aiming towards? And it might be a goal, but we really need to be specific and more articulate about what our goals are. Because it might not be happiness. It might be contentedness, it might be fulfillment, it might be purpose, it might be joy. Or it might just be like, I'm okay. And sometimes it's okay. Just to be okay. You know, I work with so many individuals across the lifespan who, when things are going, okay, they question them themselves. Like, wait, why isn't this terrible? Why isn't this a tragedy? Why isn't this a fire I need to be put out? Or why don't I feel in intense enthusiasm and excitement, and, and pleasure and pride. And I'm like, well, sometimes we don't get to those extremes. And it's actually better not to live in those extremes. Because we don't have, you know, the cortisol levels going up and down with our stressors and all the different things that can impact us, that are not only impacting how we navigate through our day, it's impacting our brains and our bodies, and the way we show up to things the way we perform, there's so many different factors that are involved that we'll tackle in other episodes, but just to be mindful that, you know, sometimes it's okay to be okay. Because so often, and I hear this, more often than not, a lot of people are feeling like they're not okay, right now. And sometimes we need to not, you know, aim for this unrealistic ideal of like, I need things to be perfect, or I need to be happy, or I need to be just joyful all the time. Because that's not reality, or we're all human, we all make mistakes, we're all going to have good days and bad days. And if we expect that things are just going to be joyful and happy all the time, we're going to be surely disappointed. More often than not
Gerald Reid 11:47
totally, and I've worked with people from all walks of life over the course of my training and professional career. And, you know, people can have little to nothing and struggle with how they feel. And people with as many resources they can ever imagine, can also struggle for different reasons, that you can have everything, and feel, let's say, pressure to somehow live up to expectations, or pressure that you should be happy because you have everything. And people who don't have much they can feel, you know, a sense of misery or despair, or loneliness, or whatever it is, that maybe they're not feeling it or fulfilling their potential because they don't have the resources to do it. There's different reasons for, you know, how people can feel. And again, like you said, I can't just say, you know, on this podcast, like, go, you know, do this one thing, like, be grateful more often. And that's always going to help everybody at every point in time, yes, gratitude certainly has been proven to be very important for people. But, you know, the purpose of this episode is to not just say one thing. And that's it for everybody at all given times. So I really appreciate what you said, Yeah. And there's
Alexis Reid 12:57
that dialectic of like, you can be grateful and still feel pretty crappy. And the gratitude might be, you know, minimized in that moment where you have some that's not really going well. And it's okay to understand that. And what I often say is that sometimes those challenges, the things that don't feel great that often turn into complaints or sadness or frustration, sometimes those are messages and signals that are helping us to say, wait, wait, something needs to change here. What can I do to shift and change my approach to make it feel a little more reasonable, a little more doable, but sometimes the challenges are what propell us to do greater things.
Gerald Reid 13:36
So let's talk about a couple areas, Lex, you know, besides this idea of like, you're happy or not, let's let's break that dichotomy down. So instead of just you're happier now, let's talk about, let's take five Main Categories. And there's been a lot of people in the fields of psychology that have talked about this in different ways. We're just going to talk about these five areas. And I talked about the researchers before. So positive emotions, right. There's a lot of different positive emotions, that's one of them. The other one is meaning, meaning could be anything to anybody, right? The way we create meaning in life is, is up to the person- growth, we'll talk about growth and being an important part of life, engagement and flow being in the moment and truly being engaged in what you're doing. And then the fifth one, just the sense of security, and we'll talk about that in terms of relational security and psychological and even physical safety. But let's kind of talk through five of those areas positive emotion, meaning growth, engagement and security.
Alexis Reid 14:37
Okay, so we've got growth, safety and
Gerald Reid 14:39
positive motion meaning growth, engagement and a sense of security.
Alexis Reid 14:44
Right, so episode with Rosie, we talked a little bit about Scott Barry Kaufman's model and thinking about it as a way to elaborate on Maslow's work and thinking about the hierarchy of needs for humans in general. I'm thinking about that sailboat model. And a lot of the pieces of the actual boat are related to feeling safe and connected and feeling like we can find some stability in our life. So that stability and safety part, especially in my work, I bring it back to feeling comfortable in a space where I'm speaking specifically about the work that I do every single day is thinking about learners and individuals and learning environments. And when we think about the sense of safety and community and feeling a part of something, you know, each individual wants to show up feeling like they're going to be understood, they're going to be seen, and then they're going to be recognized and supported in some way, right? There's no way that any educator or any student walks into a learning environment, and could actually predict exactly what every single student has experienced leading up to that moment. Right, we don't have a sense of who they are, what they've gone through that morning, that night, that week, you know, there could be a number of different things that might be happening. There's a huge issue around food insecurity that I think is more invisible in a lot of school systems, and especially in the United States then should be there's a huge issue around stress and potential traumas that might be happening in the family or in household access issues, access issues, that, you know, I'm not even talking about specific learning and access to learning. Yeah, I'm just talking about all these ecological issues that are impacting a learner. And when I talk about each individual, I'm really thinking about all the systems that's around them, you know, I really, I really work through Bronfenbrenner's model of thinking about systems theories, and how they either support and lift up community members, or sometimes they can bring them down. So we got to just always think about all these different systems that are functioning around an individual, whether we manipulate, intervene, or are mindfully making shifts, it's there's all this stuff happening around each individual that we often don't have a lot of control over. So when we have all these influences that are coming together, you know, we have to think about how that's impacting each person. And each learner.
Gerald Reid 17:16
We were just watching a movie called champions. And what a beautiful movie, Woody Harrelson was part of it. And the premise of the movie was a basketball coach. And the coach was just obsessed with, you know, rising to the upper echelons of, of the NBA ranks of coaches. And he was a genius as a coach. And he's very respected for what he was capable of. And he was an assistant coach at the time, and he was trying to, you know, show how much he knew to coach his team, and the head coach shut him down. And ultimately, he got fired for what he did, because he was very reactive in the movie. And I don't want to spoil the movie for everybody. But it's important to point this out. And the head coach said to him, Look, you're a great coach, you're one of the you know, you're like a savant at being able to coach basketball, but you don't know anything about your players. You have no relationship with them. And I am going to spoil the movie, but you still watch it. And what happens is, he ended up getting in trouble with the law and was, he had to go and do community service. And it turned out to be one of the biggest silver linings of his life, because he was able to coach a group of just amazing individuals, young adults who had Down syndrome, and other disabilities. And he had to learn within himself, how to relate, how to connect, how to experience emotion, and how to really, I'm getting the chills, think about it, because it's just an incredible movie and a beautiful story. It is just amazing. And, you know, just watch the movie, you know what I'm talking about.
Alexis Reid 19:06
And you think about access and visibility. These are all individuals and actors who experience you know, their disability every day, and they got the opportunity to showcase these incredible aspects of themselves. So I hope I hope everybody watches the movie to be quite honest, because I think it it helps to build a sense of safety for more people as we understand humanity, because there is so much variability and there are so much differences among us all
Gerald Reid 19:35
and everyone's important lex and you know, Csikszentmihalyi who wrote the book flow, and I've been you know, when I was in grad school I read these books that really stood out to me and I just dove into outline them try to pull out the the major aspects of it. And one of the things that he said in his book is it just rings true to me, you know, relationships. He said, any type of relationship can manifest the best and the worst of times, yeah, such a great quote, how true is that relationships are so intertwined into every aspect of our life. And it's really important that, you know, we do understand the significance of relationships, the power of relationships, and to prioritize them, because it's not always talked about within the scope of society. I mean, I'm thinking back to like, the 2000s, the early 2000s. And, you know, society certainly has become very conflictual. And you know, there's some reasons for that, you know, you have to kind of speak up when you feel like there's injustices, and so forth. And, you know, to feel anger is not a bad thing, if it's, you know, moving towards a purposeful, meaningful goal that's going to help, you know, help solve a problem help to make things better for people. But I'm thinking back to like the early 2000s, do you remember, when reality TV started to really take off around the early 2000s.
Alexis Reid 20:56
This is just my point of reference. But what I remember is like, MTV's like, the shows where everybody was putting a house down at the beach, or something, it wasn't even jersey shore as before that as back in the early the late 90s, I think,
Gerald Reid 21:11
and look, no judgement to people who watch that, if you get entertainment, like TV is basically entertainment, they're doing that for entertainment, right? They're not trying to teach moral lessons about life. But like, I can definitely see a progression that the more that became entertainment, the more that became glorified, that people just fighting with each other, and just hating on each other, and there's no resolution, you know, I don't watch them to know if there's a resolution or not, but I'm sure people don't, you know, not paying attention to the resolution as much as they are to the drama, and the intensity, and the anger and the hatred and all that stuff. So, you know, all that all this is to say that, you know, just, let's maybe it's important to pull back from the way that, you know, the media is trying to portray relationships and, and get back to the basics of what makes a meaningful, important relationship that maybe you're not going to see on TV, because it's not, it's not you can't sell it, you know, they don't sell that you get movies like the movie champions. And you can, you can revisit how important that stuff is,
Alexis Reid 22:08
yeah, there's like four or five things that you brought up that I will touch upon, but maybe one or two of them. Number one is important relationships, that probably wouldn't be an episode unless we brought up mom in some way. Because I think that when I was in college, and I've said this before, to some of the students I work with, that's probably when I really felt most connected to books, right. And I think mom might have given me flow in the early 2000s. And it was a book that just it really just made sense and resonated with me, I didn't even know that this was the path I was gonna go on professionally. But it just made so much sense about really kind of finding passion and leaning into some challenge to be able to find the proper level of support and challenge to help you to get into the things you do. And, you know, maybe she recognized that in me when I was younger, but thinking about relationships and how sometimes, you know, one little thing can change the trajectory, right? Like her giving me that book, and me actually connecting to it and loving reading, it probably pushed me into this developmental psychology world where I have a huge focus on positive development and positive youth development in particular. But you know, these relationships are so important, but I want to expand it not just to like personal human relationships, but also our relationships with work, our relationships, with time, our relationships with our space, our relationships with, you know, how we just navigate life, you know, sometimes we get stuck indoors, because we're so guided by technology, where we have so many missing pieces that we lose a part of our relationship with nature and the outdoors and the environment. And that moves us, I think, closer to this idea that you're mentioning about being conflicted, because we're not experiencing this range of what life offers. Yeah, and what life has to offer, fors ure,
Gerald Reid 24:06
you know, like, you know, I talked to parents and I talked to children, because I work with both in my practice, and, you know, in life now, you can kind of just be a robot, you just go through the motions, and you just kind of, you know, going through life on automation, and it prevents bonding. And look, I know you know, even Csikszentmihalyi did this research where he he would ping people throughout the day to see what they're feeling. It's like the coolest research ever done. It's like randomly pinging you like, let me just ping you, you know, when you're cooking or when you're, you know, just watching TV when you're bored when you have nothing to do when you have a lot to do when you're focused conscious. And you know, one of the things he found is that, you know, people are least happy when they're alone. And when they have nothing to do, and and not to say that like people's lives are super busy nowadays. Not everybody but like certainly, but But what I'm saying here is that like, think more critically about how to bond with each other. And because it's not always evident and if we aren't being creative about that, like, when's the last time like a parent and their child just went for a walk, or, you know, I'm talking to someone who, you know, if you're not bonding with your family, like over dinner, or you don't have time to like, really have a chat, just change the context. In the episode about emotions, I brought this up, a lot- change the context that change your feelings, and think outside of the box, like let's go do something special, that can help us to bond because just going through the daily motions is not doing it's just not enough, if you can't pull yourself out and be more present during going through the motions.
Alexis Reid 25:42
Yeah, I talk about this a lot in terms of executive function, because sometimes we need to take ourselves out of the environment and press pause and shift things and shake them up a little bit. Because oftentimes, when you're stuck on a challenge or a problem, you can get so stuck and fixated that you lose track of everything else. And sometimes it's good if we get into the sense of flow that Csikszentmihalyi describes, as you know, I call them flow-ments. Or sometimes you lose track of time. But you know, other times we just get stuck. And we don't actually move from this, we don't pivot. And a lot of times, this is our cognitive rigidity. And going back to executive function, it limits our or cognitive flexibility that allows for us to make changes. So sometimes, like you say, you have to change the context. So I often will say to people I work with, you know, if you're sitting at your desk all day, and you get stuck, don't sit there longer, that's probably not going to do for you, it's going to make you frustrated, you're going to feel a whole range of emotions, you're going to start to feel bad for yourself and question your abilities, sometimes you just need to step away and zoom out. And in what you're saying that a lot of people are having a hard time doing these days is really executive function. But it's so closely related to emotion, as we've talked about so many times that, you know, our emotions kick up, either, you know, negative or positive emotions, not even that they're negative or positive, but that will bring us up or possibly bring us down. And then from there, it shuts down our systems to be more flexible and more strategic.
Gerald Reid 27:09
Let's take that example and bring it back to relationships. If you don't cultivate your relationships, let's say with the teacher, with your coach with your family, your siblings, your, your friends, like you're gonna, you're gonna feel stuck. And I can't tell you how many times I work with people who feel stuck because they feel stuck and be able to open up to somebody and to be vulnerable and to say, hey, like, this is what's going on. Because a they're afraid of being judged to be they're afraid of burdening someone else, their family or their friends, I don't want to be a burden, I don't want to be a burden. They're afraid of the type of reaction that they're gonna get they, you know, like, you know, create kind of a, they feel like it's going to become more stressful. So, so much of relationships is communicating. And so therapy is just such a great way to slow things down and to figure out what's the most effective way to communicate, to build the relationship to build self advocacy and get the help that you need and to support. Because if you don't have that, you know, the relationship is like, it's a missed opportunity. It's like, it's experience and like different relationships are going to mean different things. You know, that's another thing too, you said that last episode with perfectionism a couple episodes ago that, you know, not everything has to be so dichotomous, like, this is my best friend, this is not my friend, or this is the best relationship, this is the worst relationship, different relationships will give you different things. And vice versa. It's a reciprocal thing. So, you know, it's important to think of it that way and not just be so dichotomous, you know, you may get support in how many ways can you get help in your life? And how many ways can you help other people, and when you get stuck in this perfectionism idea of like, what it means to help and be helped, and to support and to be supported? You know, it really kind of, it limits the expansion of what a relationship can become. I can give examples, but there's there's millions of them.
Alexis Reid 28:57
Yeah, I mean, I think this idea of expansion is so important, because we don't need to stay exactly where we are, especially if it doesn't seem to be working for us. You know, there's, there's a lot of work in mental health around, you know, not just staying in your own thoughts, because sometimes we can get lost in our own thoughts, especially if we have executive function challenges, or an emotional reactivity that doesn't allow for us to access those those skills, those cognitive skills to allow for us to be flexible. But, you know, sometimes we need this idea of behavioral activation to be able to get out of our heads and into our bodies. And sometimes that's as simple as writing things down. And I think that we as a society, and I'm guilty of this sometimes, too is what are what are our actual goals? What are our expectations for ourselves, for our relationships for what we're looking for in our lives? Sometimes we kind of tap into or attach to other people's expectations for ourselves. Some more for the relationships that we we lose track and we lose sight of ourselves. And that's where I think resentment grows and frustration. And you didn't even tap into the idea of partnerships, right romantic partnerships, because that's a whole nother episode that we'll talk about. But you have to talk about it. And I think people have such a fear of being vulnerable and asking for help. I've seen that. And I would say that, you know, we have a mental health epidemic, we might even say we have an executive function and attention epidemic. But also, you know, we have an advocacy epidemic, where people are afraid to ask for help, or sometimes they're doing too much, asking for help, or they're not relying or are building confidence in themselves,
Gerald Reid 30:45
some of your best relationships can come in those contexts where you are opening up and people are getting to know you, I hear this a lot from people I work with, it's like, oh, they can never understand me. You know, sometimes when you're struggling, you feel like nobody's going to understand nobody. And turns out, you know, people can, they can try and the communication can happen. And through that understanding can come, you know, very meaningful relationship. This happens a lot with adolescents, where I was just talking to someone who's like, you know, when, when you're younger, as a child, you're not really conscious, too much of like thinking at a higher level. But as you get into high school and stuff, your relationships deepen. And it turns out, I'm pretty sure there's research on this, that people as they become adults, and they grow old, or their most formative memories, and their their keenest memories actually are in high school. Yeah, I think that's probably the reason because it's the first time you become more conscious and aware,
Alexis Reid 31:36
yeah, and it's about the neuro development too, right, that's when a lot of the frontal lobe systems are starting to come online and develop a little bit more formally. And that solidifies some of that information for you. But you know, there's that idea of nostalgia, that's really important. But I think what comes from that is this sense of self and trust that you can experience joy, right? Because it's been there before, and it's a really nice thing to go back to. And we've talked a lot about connection, but in everything we're talking about here, I'm hearing those other, you know, categories that you discussed with, with security with connection with safety. Because we really want to make sure that, you know, we have a little bit of intimacy, which I think we're losing in relationships, that, you know, a lot of things are very superficial. It's like the whole social media world, you know, you only see the surface level of what most people's lives are, it's what they want to show you, instead of what's really happening.
Gerald Reid 32:34
So, let's get to this idea of positive emotions, right? So we talked about changing the context, we talked about, you know, doing what you actually enjoy. And I think that, you know, I think sometimes we can lose touch with what we actually care about Csikszentmihalyi, again, did that an interesting research to find out when people are happy and, and enjoying, and they're engaged in what they're doing.
Alexis Reid 32:56
I'm gonna, I'm gonna add in a spoiler alert for a minute, because it's not when things are easy, that people find the most enjoyment and fulfillment through his his research and work.
Gerald Reid 33:06
Yeah. So it was interesting, he found that when people are really concentrated on something, that and here's a little nuance, though, they weren't necessarily happy, but they had really good self esteem. Yeah. And to concentrate on what you're doing to feel like you're getting feedback in your you understand what you're doing, or, you know, and so forth. And actually, he also found that when people aren't in play, and maybe they have a little bit less concentration, but when they're in this idea of play, that they are happy. So all this to say both things are important, you know, to focus and to concentrate, and to feel like we're engaged in what we're doing for the sake of doing it can really help us to feel good about ourselves to feel fulfilled, to feel present and engage. And also to have that idea of just play, right. Like, when I'm sitting on the piano, I'm just like, making stuff up. I'm not like, you know, trying to, you know, to impress somebody or something like that. I'm just playing around and seeing what comes from it. So both things are important, you know, so much in life is multiple things are important at the same time. You know, we talked about positive and let's quote unquote, say negative emotions, right? We need both. If we don't feel sad, we'll never know what's important to us. I had such a wise, high school student and just today, you know, I told them I said, we're gonna do this episode on this topic. What do you think these kids, you know, really impressed me. He said,
Alexis Reid 34:26
more often than not,
Gerald Reid 34:27
he said, If you're happy all the time, it loses its value in what it means to be happy. And you don't really appreciate well said, beautiful, right. I mean, just it's very insightful. And it's true. And if you're not sad, you don't know what is important to you. Because, you know, what's that song? You're nobody till somebody lets you down. Something like that. You know, I'm not suggesting people should feel pain. You know, Andy Grammer actually wrote this song. It's interesting. He wishes his daughter to experience pain, but to also understand the pain and to work through it. And he's not, you know, it's not masochistic for him to say that he's he's expressing the importance of being able to go through what brings you pain in life. And, you know, those of you who watch Ted Lasso, you know, there's it's kind of a funny show, but there's some wisdom in it. And I think one of the best things he says in the show is we're going through pain, but we're going through it together.
Alexis Reid 35:26
Yeah. And I think I think, as a society, we lose track of that. Because we are so insulated, even though we're so connected. And I'm going to, you know, just go back and say, we're grateful for you playing around and noodling around on the piano, because hopefully, some of you have enjoyed watching Rafa sing along to Jerry's piano takes. But But that's also a time where, you know, we can experience relaxation, we can experience a little bit of joy in those moments of creativity, and I'm going to bring it back to skills as I tend to is usually when we feel most comfortable and confident is when we feel like we know what to do, or clear on our goals, we have the resources, and we have the skills to be able to do the work that we're set out to do. And that really is when we start to feel good about ourselves. And I think that's really what gets lost in. We've talked about this many times in the podcast, lost in setting out to reach a goal to become the best at whatever you're doing, thinking about that point of excellence, that excellence and being the best being the goat doesn't just come online right away, it takes so much effort, it takes a lot of challenges, takes a lot of ups and downs, sacrifice, a lot of sacrifice, discipline, building skills, because they don't just come online, even executive function skills, we're not just born with them, right? They grow through our experiences and interactions with the environment with others, with ourselves internally, what our narrative systems are to help us to be able to grow these skills, all of it comes together, it's all connected. It's not just one thing. And it's not just gonna happen because we want it to, we really need to think about the process. And in order to take on challenges, we also need to rest. You know, in the class that I taught this year, I really emphasized and, you know, brought up Mary Immordino and her colleagues work and the fact that, you know, rest isn't laziness. Rest is really supportive of us doing hard work, taking on challenges, building skills, replenishing our bodies and our minds to be able to tackle the things that we're aiming for to find whatever we are aiming to excel at.
Gerald Reid 37:42
Yeah, you know, I hear this from perfectionistic individuals I work with is that they almost feel guilty when they're resting. And this is an important point I jotted down that I wanted to make is that when you're going through life, reactively you're really limiting the amount of efmotions that you can feel positive emotions, typically just relief. You know, these high school students are just like, one of them at one point said, I've been trying to get to college since I came out of the womb. Yeah, you know, there's so much pressure to be able to get into the best college right quote, unquote, right college. And so when you're living reactively, and you're not living more intentionally about how you want your life to be, your only really feeling a lot of times release, you're not being able to expand and to feel joy to feel curiosity, playfulness, all inspiration, courage, gratitude, fun, you know, all that stuff that could be part of your life. But you know, and that's why I think when kids, these high school students I work with or college, whoever it is, when you're relaxing, it's there's like a guilt attached to it. Because you're not, you don't feel like you did what you did on purpose, you're just treading water trying to survive it. And when you feel like it's more intentional, this is where your work comes into my work is like, make your life more intentional, you know, and by doing so, at the end of the day, or at the end of the week, or at the end of whatever project, you can rest easy because you feel like okay, you know, maybe it wasn't perfect, but you know, I really tried to do this the way I felt was the right way to do it. And I tried my best and I utilize my resources. And I can feel content like I gave it I gave it my best shot based on you know, the way I went about it doesn't mean everything has to be completely ordered and, and too structured where it's like, you know, kind of suffocating but for sure, being more intentional, I think is important even with your friendships, right? Like, hey, in your relationship with people, let's go do something we haven't done before. Instead of just like playing video games everyday, like let's go...
Alexis Reid 39:45
Just going out for a drink or going for dinner like mix it up, anything.
Gerald Reid 39:50
When I hear, you know, high school students telling me that they like went on a rope swing into a pond. I'm like, I don't hear that much anymore. And maybe you know maybe have a biased sample or something but I love to hear stuff like that, you know, old school fun.
Alexis Reid 40:05
Yeah, I think it depends on where you live in which part of the country or world that you're in. But you know, across the board, I've been hearing it from people that, you know, kind of globally, I have a smaller sample size also. But from those who I talk to, you know, life is very structured. And I keep reminding families and students alike that the reason why there's so much homework, and so many after school programs, and so many things that you can do after school is because one, parents and caregivers are working more than ever to make ends meet. Yeah, right. Bless them for being able to work as hard as they are and to sustain things. But also, you know, a lot of those programs were developed to keep kids out of trouble. Right. And if they're not in programs, I'm noticing that they're on technology, kind of just mindlessly doing random things, which, you know, I think we really need to all take a good look at how time is being spent, you know, as adults, as children, as adolescents, as young adults, because we tend to fill up space and time with stuff. That going back to your idea of intentionality is that we're not really being intentional about how we're using this incredible blessed life that we have, right? We're here on this planet with incredible resources, some would argue more than ever, at any point in history and time,
Gerald Reid 41:25
not for everybody. But yes, collectively
Alexis Reid 41:27
I mean it exists is what I'm saying. Not that everybody has access to it, but that it exists, right? It's here. And it's available at some capacity in some way. Right? I, you know, I know a lot of people who have better technology than I do. And it's it's very interesting to think about this interplay of how we're choosing how we're prioritizing, to use our time. And I always say we can't manage time, even though that is, you know, people have a tendency to talk about executive function in terms of time management, we can't manage it can't make more of it. We can't manipulate it. We can't redistribute it, though, sometimes I think I can. But we can prioritize it, and we can prioritize how we use it. And it's a constant struggle, right? I'm not saying that there is no perfect equation to be able to do that. But we need to be more mindful and intentional about how we're using it. And, and also recognizing the emotionality behind it, and being compassionate for ourselves and others, as we're prioritizing how we're spending time, you know, some people have limitations that, you know, a caregiver or an adult can't always be with a child. So, you know, they have access to technology, which is a really great way sometimes to regulate a kid. But we also want to develop the self regulatory skills for individuals, especially children, adolescents and young adults, I say that we're actually at a self regulatory deficit right now. And those who are able to activate self regulatory skills kind of on command, are actually working at a premium because they are bringing to their classrooms to work an incredible skill that not everybody has been able to develop. Because, you know, we all go back to our iPhones or, you know, our technology, because it's a safe space that feels comfortable. And it makes you feel like you're connected, even though you're not really and sometimes it's bringing about more negative outcomes than it's helping. But, you know, God, we need to be more intentional about how we're using space and time because I think that's a really important piece of, you know, understanding what excellence means for us. Sometimes it does mean resting, but can we do more intentional rest? I talk about this all the time with my clients. Can you what is intentional rest for you? Is it picking up an instrument and just kind of like noodling around without the expectation, you're gonna play the best version of a song you've ever played? Does it mean just going outside and going for a walk, laying on the grass, just looking at the sky,
Gerald Reid 43:55
you have a really cool, really cool image in your office, it says 50 ways to take a break, and whoever did the artists work is really great. Yeah, I love that one. It's just really cool. You know, so there's a really good book, by the way, here, you know, it's called The Power of full engagement. And the idea basically, is exactly what you're saying, you can't, you can't always manage time, but you can manage your energy. And we have different versions of energy. Physically, emotionally, spiritually, people believe that and, and other versions of your energy, so focus on managing energy, you have more control over that than time some ways. And the other point I want to come back to about self regulation is let's, you know, let's not forget where self regulation comes from. A lot of times, it comes from relationships. It comes from having that person you can go to talk through things. You know, a lot of times in therapy that is one of the biggest essence. It's the essence of what therapy is useful and how it's useful for a lot of in a lot of ways. Obviously, there's more to it than just listening and talk thing. And we got into that in the first episode of season one. But certainly being self regulated is having the space to process what you're feeling what you're thinking, your relationships, your experiences, and to talk through it. And without that, it's unfortunate, because a lot of people come and, you know, whatever is the reason that it's not happening in their life, you know, to to have the space for, you know, 45 minutes an hour of session to be able to talk through things is so valuable, especially nowadays, as you're saying, because the technology pulls us away from truly communicating in a way. And again, it's not technology, it's like, let's talk in a free flowing dynamic way, we can really make sense and understand things, and it's an art. And I think, generally, it's hard for people to do that on both ends, you know, I have to train myself to be a good listener. It doesn't just like happen out of nowhere, I think, hopefully, I can say I'm predisposed to being a bit better at it because of my personality. But like, it takes training, it takes like practice, it takes learning and experiences. So, you know, let's not forget about self regulation, not just being like, you have to learn this skill, I'm going to teach you the skill to become more self regulated. That is true. I just don't want us to all forget about how important it is to talk. And maybe one of the reasons we're having a hard time being self regulate as a society is because we're losing the ability to talk the process to connect to feel, right,
Alexis Reid 46:26
yeah, it's such a good point
Gerald Reid 46:27
to even feel like, you know, I went through this hard time, I just have to be able to go through the feelings with somebody else listening.
Alexis Reid 46:35
Yeah, I will. I will say that sometimes in those moments, I'm such a helper and problem solver. And my brain works really quickly that sometimes I jump in those moments to try to problem solve for people. And I'm super intentional, about pressing pause for myself and saying, we just need to sit here in this moment. Because this stinks like this is really challenging for you. You know, I said it just before with with one of my best friends, you know, you're going through this really hard moment, I'm thinking about all the possibilities. But maybe that's not what you need right now. Maybe we just need to sit in the suck, like the sucks right now. And we need to just like live it for a moment to make sense of it and make sense of it. And that's okay.
Gerald Reid 47:18
And it's also true to be resilient. Right. Like both things are true. I think we kind of get in parents and teachers in the society, we can get pulled into this dichotomy, like, are we overly emotional? Or are we overly telling people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps? Hmm, I think
Alexis Reid 47:35
it can be both
Gerald Reid 47:36
Both can be true, right? You know, DBT says two things can be true at the same time, the dialectic there. I think both are equally important. And it just it's hard, though, it's hard to find that balance and that nuance. But, you know, that's things that are easy in life, you know, things that are hard in life, that's sometimes how the best things come from. So what let's try to work on that, you know, collectively.
Alexis Reid 47:56
absolutely. Well, I think the other piece, too, you know, you mentioned that you train yourself to be a good listener. And I think that is definitely a big piece of it. But the other piece, too, is being in a place to be a good listener. There's this idea of co-regulation that I think a lot of us forget about, that when we're regulating ourselves, we can be more present for those that we're with. And, you know, I hear this all the time from the people I work with, not just young people, you know, people across the lifespan, who say sometimes just talking with you, and being in Your presence is helpful for me. You know, I think in a lot of people who are caregivers, educators, therapists, coaches, being able to take care of ourselves in a way to show up and be present for another. And I think that's the big piece that sometimes is missing. And I think the busyness and the over structured piece, and not prioritizing and intentionally using our time, sometimes the awareness piece of what helps and what doesn't get lost. And I think that we need to be very intentional for ourselves as people in the worlds of others. Just pretty much anybody in the world. Even if you're not an educator, therapist, or coach, or parent, we need to be aware of what helps us to find some place of regulation, that we can even show up and be present. Right? Can we have some awareness? I mean, this is a big part of my meditation and mindfulness practices, you know, just quieting yourself enough so that you can show up and not just have the noisiness of my mind working in the background all the time. Because our minds are constantly going sometimes it's louder than others. Sometimes it's more organized than other times. But how do we actually find a way to quiet ourselves enough so that we can be open to what's happening in the person's life that's right in front of us. And for young people. This is most especially most important there's so much research that shows it If you're an adult and young person's life, if a young person, regardless of the adverse impacts of their environment in their life, if they have one consistent, positive, supportive adult in their life, it can change the trajectory of their developmental outcomes. And it's amazing,
Gerald Reid 48:53
it's one of the most consistent findings. Theoretically, it makes sense in for all the reasons that we're talking about. And the quality of life certainly improves when he got that one emotional support person.
Alexis Reid 50:27
And I will say, for adults, too, it feels the same way, right? You know, we have family members, that are really helpful for us, we have great friends that you can always go back to, and whether or not you connect with them frequently or not, because life is so busy, just knowing you have them and you can count on them brings us back to this idea of safety and connection, and, you know, feeling stable and steady. Even admist, you know, the turbulence of life.
Gerald Reid 50:54
Totally. And so let's go into, you know, we've been talking about a lot of relationships and emotions, let's talk about growth is another area of, you know, let's expand the idea of what it means to be happy. growth, growth, could be self awareness, you know, let's not underestimate how important and and valuable self awareness is. And it takes time, like even you know, in certain relationships, you may not be able to talk through everything, because you're not being totally honest. And again, I'll keep saying this in therapy, like I tell people say, whatever you want to say, like, don't filter, this won't work, if you're not going to, you know, be open and honest, and help me understand how I can help you to facilitate that. So we can work together cohesively, but
Alexis Reid 51:36
I always say that too, it's like, if you're going to not be honest with me or yourself, I mean, it the only person's going to impact is really you, because it's not going to help you to move forward, we have to be honest and vulnerable enough to see that there's areas to be developed. And that's okay, that's ok for all of us.
Gerald Reid 51:54
Yeah, and where there's pain, where it's hard to express an acknowledged pain and areas that we feel like we're falling into traps. And like, you know, it's not always evident what the growth is, sometimes we can fixate on one thing and say, like, you know, I have this problem with, you know, relying on substances, or I have this problem with thinking poorly of myself, that that may be very true, it's sometimes, you know, when I keep exploring a and can find, wait, that there's actually something else that you're avoiding, and those are symptoms of what you've been avoiding. And it could be that you're just afraid to do something that you feel like you need to do. It could be what we talked about opening up to someone, or it could be trying something like a career move or trying something that you really want to try and avoiding that thing, because you're afraid and you can't work through that fear is leading to these other symptoms. So so so clarifying self awareness is important in therapy,
Alexis Reid 52:52
I think that's, I was so grateful for so many people this season to admit like, I didn't really know what I was doing. Or I didn't feel masterful in my skills yet, when I started. And sometimes you have to take that leap, and, and have faith and confidence that it might work out. Right. And if it doesn't, that there's other options and other pathways that you can explore most of the time. So you know, getting to the point where you can feel like you have skills. But you know, like we talked about in the perfectionistic episode, that sometimes when there is a fear when there's a lack of skill, when there's not this awareness of self, sometimes we put ourselves in these situations that tend to knock us down or feel more magnified in, in what feels like an experience of failure.
Gerald Reid 53:43
Totally. And Csikszentmihalyi in his flow book, he points this out, and I made a I highlighted this part, he said, self reflection is not easy, especially when we're upset. Because when we're upset, our mind is biased towards the negative. You know, there's plenty of studies on that when you're in a negative mood, you're more likely to think negative thoughts, you're more likely to perceive things in a negative light. It's emotion driven, you know, that's why a lot of the work that is done out of CARD, you know, Dr. David Barlow developed this, you know, it's it's based on a lot of research and other people's work and his work. But the idea is that you know, understand how your emotions affect your thinking as much as your thinking affects your feelings. And so self reflection is not easy, because we can ruminate, we can just kind of fall into these repetitive cycles of thinking that about ourselves and, and self reflection takes time. That's why again, therapy or relationships or journaling, and shifting the context of how you're reflecting helps you to see things from a different light, a different perspective that helps you to think a bit more critically about what's happening and maybe helps you to express your feelings rather than suppress them and helps you to, you know, expand the way you're thinking and I thought that was just such a wise statement. That's self reflection. To him, it seems like an easy thing. It's almost like, you know, they say mindfulness is simple, but it's so hard. You know, self reflections like that sometimes, too. Yeah,
Alexis Reid 55:09
I say that, you know, mindfulness and meditation is probably the hardest thing I ever do. In going back, you know, card is the Center for anxiety related disorders at Boston University, where you did a lot of your training. And I think there's a lot of great work that comes out of there and other institutions, too, that have guided our approach to the work that we do. But, you know, we need to really recognize how our thoughts how our mind how our emotions dictate so much of what happens, but but not to fall into this trap of positive or negative, good or bad, but really experiencing them. And what I think one of the biggest takeaways from what we're talking about here today is, can we sit with it? To understand what messages these emotions are telling us? To be able to determine, you know, what skills do I need to develop? What path should I try to walk down? What resources or supports can I reach out to? And you know, you mentioned therapy is a good opportunity to do this work. But, you know, as we're closing this episode, I also want to offer for our listeners to do the things we talked about, right? Can you write down a list of what your expectations are for yourself? Can you write down? Like, what do you really want from life? And how are your values, the things you care most about driving those expectations? And then also think about, you know, what are some of the skills that you feel really strong in, that are going to be maybe your your anchors, to keep you steady when you're trying and challenging yourself to do new things. But also recognizing and being aware of the things that maybe don't always work out so well or feel a little bit weaker? Or that they're still developing a skill sets? Because no, one of us has a complete set of skills, even as adults, even as trained adults in the world, as you and I are, but really thinking about, you know, what are those things that we struggle with? And what are those masks? And those things that we tend to do that cover up those struggles? Whether it's, you know, some we use technology to avoid them, we might use substances to avoid them. We might use, you know, charisma and comedy sometimes to avoid them. Yeah. Like, what are the things that we're doing that is maybe preventing us from experiencing that sense of fulfillment or joy,
Gerald Reid 57:41
authenticity, too
Alexis Reid 57:42
Yeah, authenticity, too
Gerald Reid 57:43
For sure, yeah, I mean, to feel good about yourself, on a fundamental level is one of the hardest things people can do in their life. And it takes time, you know, to really feel good about yourself, you got to understand yourself, you know, and think about all the things we've been talking about, there's, there's plenty more, I'm not going to get into all of it. But you know, and so focusing again, on growth in meaning in your life, you can think of each segment or phase as meaning something that you want it to mean, right, if you have gone through a segment of your life, where maybe you had something and he lost it, you're going to feel sad. And as you said, our emotions are telling us something, we lost something that's important to us. And that's important to pay attention to it means you might need something to replace that with. So as you mourn the loss of something, because both things are equally important, mourn the loss, go through the feelings, and then decide what to do next. It could be that you figure out what this time of your life is about, you know, and you can figure out, hey, maybe this is the time of life, I'm going to experience music, you know, and I have the the resources mentally and with perhaps a little bit more time, because I lost something that fulfills my time, I'm going to pour into music, because that's important to me. And now's the time to do it. And maybe another segment of time, maybe you have kids, and you know that time of your life is about fostering your family, and maybe you lose, you know, going out having fun with friends as much as you did, because your new priority is your family. And maybe you'll learn ways to create meaning around that that is important to you, and you find fulfilment in different ways. But if you don't shift that and you don't kind of mourn the changes and the loss, you can become, you know, you can feel stressed, conflicted, resentful, and have a hard time you know, coming to terms with changes. But again, like so much of going through life is changes are inevitable and to mourn the changes in the losses. And then the shift into what next and how to create meaning and to fulfill it in different ways is, is an art form. It takes time and it may not be evident how to do that. I don't expect to know when I'm working with people what that will be. It takes an exploration to figure out what that's going to be that's going to be fulfilling and meaningful and make sense to them. The last thing I want to stay to this is going to kind of round out, you know, we're talking about what an individual can do to expand happiness in life. Let's also think about ways that coaches, teachers, parents, adults, mentors, people who, you know, run programs, after school programs, or whatever it is, you know, think of ways to enhance different aspects of happiness, because as much as your job, let's say, as a coach is to get the best out of your players to be good, you know, people can become burnt out. And I've seen that in sports, right? If you're not really enjoying, to some degree, whether it's, you know, the environment, the relationships, the meaning, the purpose, the autonomy, the, the feelings, and the growth, like, if it's not, if you're not feeling it, right. You may get burnt out, and you may lose joy, and you may lose motivation to continue. So remember how different things can affect the individual you're working with, and to try to embrace different ways of enhancing that. And look, there's, it's hard like being a teacher, being a coach, being a parent, these are hard jobs, especially when you have multiple people you're responsible for, it's hard to figure that out for each individual for the collective. It's not easy, but you know, we're just saying, remember the importance of that. Because it's more than just improving, it's more than just, you know, getting the best or trying to, you know, mold, you know, a child or a person into what you want them to become. It's like, it's the experience, it's the journey, it's the joy, it's the meaning. It's the engagement, the flow, it's the sense of security
Alexis Reid 1:01:31
It's a process. And in going back to the movie reference champions, Woody Harrelson changed his relationship with what he found in thought was happiness for him. He realized that happiness was right in front of him, it was a part of what he was doing, without chasing after anything. And sometimes when we're in the moment, when we're aware when we're present, when we feel like we have a sense of self that makes sense and feels comfortable. That's when we can experience joy, and happiness. And we have we offer and hope that you all find a point in your day, or you can sit back and just appreciate like, Yeah, I'm okay. And that's a good feeling.
Gerald Reid 1:02:17
Definitely. And it's a process we're all trying to figure this out, right? If there was like an A plus B equals C to happiness in life, you know, you can be sure that someone would try to sell it. And that hasn't worked. As it works as much as they try to market it hasn't worked.
Alexis Reid 1:02:35
Every day, every experience, every context that can present a set of different variables that we need to work with. And being aware and being open to being flexible is I think where it's all about.
Gerald Reid
Thanks for tuning in to the Reid Connect-ED podcast. Please remember that this is a podcast intended to educate and share ideas, but it is not a substitute for professional care that may be beneficial to you at different points of your life. If you are needed support, please contact your primary care physician, local hospital, educational institution, or support staff at your place of employment to seek out referrals for what may be most helpful for you. ideas shared here have been shaped by many years of training, incredible mentors research theory, evidence based practices and our work with individuals over the years, but it's not intended to represent the opinions of those we work with or who we are affiliated with. The reconnected podcast is hosted by siblings Alexis Reid and Dr. Gerald Reid. Original music is written and recorded by Gerald Reid (www.Jerapy.com) recording was done by Cyber Sound Studios. If you want to follow along on this journey with us the Reid Connect-ED podcast. we'll be releasing new episodes every two weeks each season so please subscribe for updates and notifications. Feel free to also follow us on Instagram @ReidConnectEdPodcast that's @ReidconnectEdPodcast and Twitter @ReidconnectEd. We are grateful for you joining us and we look forward to future episodes. In the meanwhile be curious, be open, and be well.
In this episode, Gerald and Alexis discuss the construct of happiness and offer ideas related to appreciating the nuance and fluctuations in life, rather than only striving for happiness. Rather than thinking in a dichotomous way: either happy or unhappy, can we expand the idea of happiness? Considering the foundations of happiness, this episode tackles some of the barriers that get in the way and suggestions to heighten joyful experiences.
Be curious. Be Open. Be well.
The ReidConnect-Ed Podcast is hosted by Siblings Alexis Reid and Dr. Gerald Reid, produced by and original music is written and recorded by www.Jerapy.com
*Please note that different practitioners may have different opinions- this is our perspective and is intended to educate you on what may be possible.
