Cultivating Happiness with Dr. Gillian Mandich

Tune in to the Invigor Medical Podcast featuring Dr. Gillian Mandich, a renowned author and expert in happiness research. Explore the compelling intersection of happiness science with health and wellness.

00:00 Introduction and Background
02:01 The Science of Happiness
06:29 Journey to Happiness Research
09:49 The Relationship Between Health and Happiness
11:45 Cultivating Happiness as a Habit
18:52 Rethinking Happiness as a Destination
24:04 The Impact of Gratitude on Happiness
30:50 Frequency and Intensity of Gratitude Practice
31:18 Sharing Gratitude with Others
32:12 Modeling Gratitude for Children
36:10 The Dark Side of Pursuing Happiness
39:25 Giving Ourselves Grace on Bad Days
41:41 Finding What Works for You
47:25 The Importance of Embracing a Full Spectrum of Emotions
48:20 Finding Meaning in Pain and Suffering
55:43 Conclusion and Where to Find Jillian Mandich

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Transcript

Derek Berkey (00:00)
Hi, and welcome to the Invigor Medical Podcast, where we're going to walk with you on your journey toward optimal health, performance, and wellbeing. My name is Natalie. And I'm Derek. And we're going to be your hosts on this journey. In each episode, we share insights from top professionals in physical, mental, and emotional health. With that said, let's dive into today's podcast. In today's Invigor Medical Podcast, we are excited to have Dr. Jillian Mandich. Jillian is the founder of the International Happiness Institute of Health.

science, research, say that five times fast, and an acclaimed author in the field, Jillian. Welcome to the Invigor Medical Podcast. We are so excited to have you this morning. Should I? Is it Jillian? Is it Dr. Mandich? Dr. Jillian? Jillian's fine. Jillian's fine. Okay. Just don't call me Gill again.

It's not Gilligan. That's fair. That was a child that made me cry. So I answered anything but that. Oh, that's terrible. I will be honest, when I was looking up some material to research this episode, Gilligan's Island is one of the things that popped up. Oh my gosh. Well, if you're Gilligan, I get to be Ginger. There I loved that show growing up. Yeah, yeah. And then I sometimes get called Dr. Mandick.

There's no camera on the but that happens. So as long as you avoid those two, I'll answer to I think we'll be OK for this one. I think we'll be good. I'm Natalie. This is Derek. But by the end of the show, who knows? Maybe we'll all have special nicknames for one another. That'd be fun. Just become all really close friends as we. I'm already happy. This is great. This is fantastic. Jillian's just got the energy we're already feeling. Anyway, the point being, welcome to our show. We're so excited to have you.

Thank you. You're welcome. I love chatting about the science of happiness. I'm happy to be here. Oh, I can tell. And it's like all over your face. If you're only listening and not watching, you're just exuding an aura of happiness. And I'm excited for this conversation because, you know, we talk a lot about health and wellness on the Invigor Medical Podcasts. Now, obviously, mental health is a huge, huge part of your overall health and well -being, right? But I don't know that we've ever really spent time talking about...

happiness or the science of happiness. I know that I reference joy a fair amount. That's something that I try to have a focus on in my life as well. But I'm really excited to dive into, I'm not sure many people would think about there being a science of happiness. So maybe we could start a little bit with how did you get here to being in this place where you're the founder of the International Happiness Institute of Health Science Research? That's crazy and amazing. Tell us about the journey.

So, you know, I think the number one question that I get asked when I tell someone I'm a happiness researcher or I study the science of happiness is like, do you have a real job? It's a very foreign concept because, you know, if we started this conversation and I said I'm a nutrition researcher or I'm a diabetes researcher or cardiovascular disease, your follow -up question wouldn't be, do you have a real job, Jillian, right? True. But for some reason,

Just like we can apply scientific principles to learn about nutrition or diabetes or cardiovascular disease or physical activity, whatever it is, we can learn about happiness. But the thing is, it's actually, and I find this very surprising, a fairly new field in sort of this from a scientific perspective. So it wasn't up until about the mid -90s that we actually saw a significant increase in the body of literature surrounding happiness, which when you take a second, you pause and you think about that. So up until the mid -90s, which isn't that long ago. No, it's not.

We were really focused on disease. What's wrong? How do we fix it? As opposed to the other side, right? Like we get one shot at life. How do we live our best life ever? How do we learn to be happy? You ask every single parent in the world and you say, what do you want for your child? And they tell you, I want my child to be happy, but we're not taught how. So like no wonder there's confusion and no wonder there's a huge gap in terms of the research. So to be totally honest, I didn't even know you could study happiness until the second year of my PhD.

Okay. So I'm from London, Ontario. I did all three of my degrees at Western University. Go Mustang. That's in London, Ontario, Canada. And I used to study childhood obesity. My master's degree, all my degrees are in health science. My master's degree focus within health science was child and youth health. And I was working with children and families that were living with obesity. And so I went right into my PhD after my master's. And in my second year,

I was having this existential crisis as one does in grad school where they're like, what am I doing with my life? Where is this all going? And I was having it at Pilates one day and my Pilates teacher had two reformers and the reformer beside her, she had a prof that day that was from the business school at my school at IAV it's called. And as I'm telling her this, she's like, well, maybe health science isn't the right fit. Maybe you should come to the business school.

You seem pretty entrepreneurial. We have a health section here. Like maybe that's a better fit. And I was like, you know, maybe. And then she made this off comment and like, have you ever had an off comment that someone probably doesn't even remember saying to you that like completely changed your life? Absolutely. Says to me, or maybe you'd be interested in my sister's research. She's out East on the East coast of Canada in New Brunswick and she studies sustainable happiness. And I was like, what's that? I went home and I Googled it and then.

So sustainable happiness is more like how our environment affects our happiness. But to be totally honest, that was the first time, the second year of my PhD that I sat down at my computer and thought you can actually study happiness. Like that's a thing. And so because I was in health science, I started researching the connection between health and happiness. And I started reading all this literature. Like when you compare happy people to less happy people,

Happy people have lower rates of cardiovascular disease. They have stronger immune systems. They heal faster from injury. They tend to make better nutritional choices. They tend to sleep better, both in terms of duration and quality. And like the list was on and on. And so I thought, well, if my interest is in health promotion, then this seems to be a better fit because one, it has nothing to do with the number on a scale, right? When you're talking about obesity, children have a BMI above a certain percentile. So it's inclusive to everybody. There's no stigma associated with saying I want to be happier.

And the benefits are so far reaching in our personal life and for our physical health, for how we show up at work, in all sort of aspects of life. And so halfway through my PhD, I completely switched topic. Wow. For a state in health science, we went from obesity to happiness.

So my PhD actually took me five years instead of four because I had to restart all of my research. But I'm happy that I did because it's been a really cool journey. And I think that now we're in a different world, right? Like the post pandemic world, we can talk about mental health and it's not, why do I care about it? Which was the question I got asked a lot before, but it's like, what do I do about it? Like, what can we actually learn from the research and how do we apply what we know to actually make meaningful change? Yeah, that is so fascinating. So there's something that you said.

that talked about how the relation between health and happiness, and that got me, a big question that I have about that is, is the health coming from the fact the person's happy, or is the happiness the thing that is spurring the health to move in the right direction? I was kind of wondering about that too, what comes first, the chicken or the egg, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, that's a great question. So to be totally honest, I don't know.

fully the answer yet. Part of the reason for that is like I mentioned, like we're learning so much in this field, even from when I got into it to what we know now has changed so much. Like even when I first got into it, we used to have this theory called the set point theory. And we used to think that the way happiness worked was sort of like a thermometer in a room, right? Like we have sort of our level of happiness and something good happens, it goes up and then eventually it goes back down or something hard happens, it goes down, but we kind of get back up to that temperature.

But what we know now is that no matter what we were born with, each and every one of us have the capacity to not only increase our happiness short term, but we can actually sustain it at higher levels. So it is something that we can actually do something about. In terms of your question, so that's just sort of an example of where we're continually learning. I think that your question is a really great example of where that is as well, because what we see is that happier people tend to make healthier choices.

But like you said, it's sort of like, where is the line between? And also there's a distinction between being unhappy and being depressed as well. And I think that that's an important distinction, right? Like we can have, be an overall happy person and have a bad day. And that's very different than if you are, you know, receiving a clinical diagnosis for depression, right? Call marks like extended periods of time and things like that. But what we do know is that across the board, even when we sort of, and a lot of what's interesting is,

a lot of the initial happiness research came from twin studies. So what they did was they found twins that were monozygotic, like genetically identical, separated at birth. And so the other hard part about answering your question is as soon as you get into like environmental real life situation, it's not like you can control everything in a lab. So this twin study is an example of kind of best that we can kind of do sometimes, right? Genetically identical, separate environments we can assess. And so that's where a lot of the work, especially at the beginning about

you know, thinking that happiness was really genetically determined came from those twin studies. But it's not this black and white thing, but what we do know is across the board, you know, when people are feeling happy, they tend to like, like I said, all the physical health things, they tend to be more productive, better problem solvers, make more money. So there's a lot of different things that I think, and also it's sort of like any momentum when you have it, the more that we do it, the more that it starts to grow too, right? And happiness, happiness works that way too. And I would imagine that the relationship is, uh,

what is the word I'm looking for? They run concurrently. I'm sure that they run in both directions at the same time. So it's hard to really identify this is the one specific thing that makes you happy or this one specific thing about being happy makes you healthy. But absolutely fascinating. Yeah, it's kind of like obesity in that way. When I used to study obesity, people would say, oh, it's because of the social media. It's because of the food. It's because of fast food. And it's just not a simple answer. It's a complex question with a very complex problem and a complex solution. I know in the wintertime.

And I'm sad. I'm so sad. It's been so foggy here in Easter Washington for so long. And I'll tell you what, I don't, I do struggle to get to the gym more and be eating the way I need to be eating and like get up on time. Like, and I just feel sadder and it affects every other area of my life because I'm in the seasonal blues, right? So I know that just for myself at least. And, and that is a real thing. Like that's the other thing is that,

Seasonal affective disorder, so this tendency to dip in North America, it's in our winter months, right? It's flipped when we go across like Australia, but here in North America, when the cold weather hits, when the dark days hit, we tend to hibernate, we do tend to see a dip in moods. That's absolutely true. It's true for myself as well. And so knowing that, you know, it's interesting because the times when we really need to do things is the times when we're least likely to want to do them, right? Right. And so.

It's the depths of the winter that it's the hardest to get out and go to the gym, right? When it's a sunny, beautiful day in the summertime and like, it's not as hard. And so oftentimes this is where the work comes in because that's the other thing I think people like, you see these quote cards on Instagram all the time that say like, choose happy today. I'm happy. And I'm like, it doesn't quite work like that. Like we don't just wake up in the morning and we choose happy. Like we're choosing our outfit. It doesn't work like that. We actually, a lot of happiness is a habit. It's a skill. It requires effort. It requires work.

on an ongoing basis. And unfortunately, people don't want to hear that because they want a magic pill, right? But I think a lot of the good things in our life, they require us putting in effort and work because those are the things that if you think about like your physical health, right, nutrition, all of those things, a big player's sleep, they require us to actually be a participant in that. Things don't just fall into our laps, right? Right. And so your goal, I'm assuming with this institute that you founded is to help equip people.

and learn how to cultivate the skill of happiness. Am I right? Exactly. So what happened was when I was doing my PhD, when I was doing recruitment for obesity, it was really difficult. And so I would go on TV in my small town, London, Ontario, Canada. And it was like a morning show that only aired in my town of 300 ,000 people or whatever it was. And I was recruiting for obesity. And then...

I realized that TV was like a fun way to teach something, just in a shorter amount of time. I was teaching at the university that I was at at the time too. So I realized I loved teaching and I was like, wow, TV is this opportunity to teach just in a different classroom. And so then I started going to Toronto. So in Canada here, all our big TV shows are shot out of Toronto, which was about two hour drive from where I was. So I would drive up, do TV. And then because I was on TV, people started asking me to come to their companies and organizations.

And so my company was sort of born out of that because it's like, yeah, we can talk about like, essentially if I'm going in and doing, you know, a lunch and learn or a keynote or a workshop, it's teaching, it's just a different classroom with no marking by the way. So that's also a good feature. And so, yeah, so essentially I am the most, the thing that lights me up the most is figuring out one, how do we do research? And then two, how do we learn and apply that research to make meaningful change so that we can live happier and healthier lives?

Oh my gosh. That's great. I love that. So I, my brain is brimming full of questions right now. And like, uh, I think that a lot of people think in terms of like, okay, how can I apply this into my life? But, uh, in a, in a large part, I like to kind of try to understand the actual mechanisms. Like how does this actually work? Because if you know how it works, then you know how to utilize the system better. Right. So I guess my question for you is like happiness, is it, is it, is there a location in the brain where like, if someone's happy, it lights up?

Are there specific neurochemicals that are associated with happiness? How exactly does happiness work in our brains and our bodies? Great question. So again, this is a complex answer because it's not like as simple. Like sometimes you see Instagram, like I guess I'm, you know, poor Instagram today, but like you see like serotonin, happy molecule, dopamine, this, it's really not that simple. And a lot of it is really...

we're learning still so much about what's going on in the brain. And then you add in things like, you know, the anticipation of something being happy, not bringing you as much happiness. So I don't think we know enough to give a very clear answer, but I also don't know if there's ever going to be one because there's different things. Like even with happiness, there's different levels to our happiness. So this goes back to like Aristotle in like Nicomachean ethics back so long ago, he sort of described,

two types of happiness. So one he called hedonic happiness. And that's like the sex, the drugs, the rock and roll. That's like the feel good in the moment, you know, that, you know, going out with your friends, doing a shot at the bar, eating dinner, whatever like that in the moment. And then there's another type of happiness, which he called eudaemonic, B -U -D, eudaemonic. And that was more like purpose, meaning.

legacy overall, kind of when I look at my life, like not in the moment, but if you kind of like bird's eye view, zoom out and look at your life. And so even within that, like there's different types that have different ways of sort of being expressed and understood in the body. But one thing I think that's really interesting across the board is that what we see is that with happiness, if there's not a one size fits all equation, it's really very different.

both in terms of what makes us happy. Like I can't tell anyone how to be happy because it really does come down to us having to answer that question for ourself, which is a very difficult question for a lot of us to answer because we often don't even think about that. We want to be happy, but do we actually take the time to think about what is it that makes me happy? And then our definition for ourself of happiness evolves throughout our lifespan, right? Like it's not like we figure out this equation and then we're good, right? If you think about what made you happy when you were 16 versus now,

versus when you're 100, it's different. So a lot of it is this dynamic moving process of deeper self understanding and learning that for ourselves. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, I think people notice, like I can notice a feeling of happiness, but you're right, getting down to the nitty gritty of like, why am I happy or why does this make me happy and the difference between like just really happy in the moment kind of thing and like overall kind of what I've always kind of referred to as like abiding joy.

to live in a state of joy, but being a choice, but also drawing awareness in the moment to those things. So can you maybe take us through a little bit? What is the process of cultivating happiness or what's the first step? Yeah, I love this question. I'm asked this question a lot and my answer is, it's not about, I think as soon as we think about, okay, what do I have to do to be happy? What's step one? We think about what do we have to do?

What am I going to put on my to -do list? What's the additional activity that I need to do? And I always say step number one, before you actually start doing anything else, it's about appreciating the good that you already have in your life. So instead of seeking like S -E -E -K happiness, step one is seeing like S -E -E -I -N -G, seeing happiness. My camera's blurted out. You can't see me seeing happiness. You're good. Because...

A lot of it is like, and the reason I say this is because this has been particularly a salient sort of silver lining that I've seen through the pandemic. So before the pandemic, when I would ask, because I'm constantly asking people what makes you happy, right? Right. Happiness research and you can't take it out of me. So I would hear things like, oh, the trip I just went on, the promotion I just had, my birthday party, whatever it was. Now, when I ask people, I'm hearing much more frequently, I'm hearing things like going for coffee with my mom.

having dinner with my friends, giving my sister a hug. So a lot of the things that we actually had in our life that were good, it's like we almost took them for granted or we didn't appreciate how much happiness they actually brought until they were removed. So I really think that step number one is to start to appreciate what we have. And then the other thing I would say too is that, well, many of us think happiness is a destination, right? Like I will be happy when, throw in the blank.

when I have X amount of dollars, when I get married, when I get divorced. Achieve this goal, divorce. That was funny. Sorry. No, no, she has a point. I've never done that happier. We think that one day in the future, if something happens, then I will be happy. Right. This is like a very real thought. To be perfectly honest, it's so natural.

Right? Like I caught myself when I was writing my PhD dissertation about happiness saying, I will be happy when I finished writing a PhD. So, you know, if we all think that sometimes. And so the other piece is really what I call and I borrow this term from Adam Grant. He wrote a really great book called Think Again. It's the first book that I ever listened to on Audible and then bought. So good. Like bought the hard copy. Yeah. And this book really challenges.

challenges us to rethink things, to think about what do we believe and why do we do it and are there different perspectives. And so with happiness, you know, instead of seeing it like a destination, how can we rethink it? And so when we look to the research, happiness is not something that we arrive at one day and it's not a permanent state either, right? You don't get there. Like say you get the house, you get the car, you get the guy, whatever it is. One, what we know from research is it doesn't bring us as much happiness as we anticipated that it would. Right. Two,

It doesn't last for as long as we think that it will. And so even if we get it, it's not going to bring us what we anticipated that it did. And it's also contingent on things happening that may or may not happen. So instead, the way I think about happiness, when I've re sort of thought that it's not this destination, what a happy life means is I almost think about happiness like a muscle. So if you want to get strong, you go to the gym, you exercise, right? You lift weights. Over time, your muscle gets stronger.

And so happiness works the same way. And like you would never go into the gym, say after we're recording, you go to the gym, okay? You have the best workout of your life. You would never leave the gym and text a friend or a partner and say, like grab your phone and be like, I just had the best workout of my life. I've reached fitness. I've reached fitness. I mean, you see memes about that all the time where it's like I eat one salad and I'm like, okay, where's my good body now? Like, you know, people think that that's something that's going to happen. Yeah.

That's not how it works. Even when we see that meme about nutrition, it's funny because we understand that one salad doesn't change your body, your body composition, right? But with happiness, if we think about happiness the same way we think about physical activity, right? It's a practice, it's a habit. Then what it does is it takes happiness from being contingent upon something in the future and it brings it into today. And the question is, okay, well, what can I do today to build my happiness muscle, right? To build that habit.

And what we know also from research is that the frequency of happy moments is much more predictive of a happier life than the intensity. So we're better off to have short birth more frequently, more often versus like the one big day that we're having a big party. The small births are actually what adds up to more happiness. And if you actually think about it, most of our days are pretty ordinary.

Most of our days we kind of get up, we have our routine. And so if you actually take the time from those days and you add up how much time that is, that's actually a lot more happiness, but it doesn't hold as much cognitive real estate because it's nothing special or ordinary, right? It's just us in our day -to -day life. And so the question becomes, okay, what happens is that as I do things on a daily basis that make me happier, your happiness muscle gets stronger. That's why I said earlier that not only can we maintain our happiness short term,

when we do this habit over time, we can actually sustain it at higher levels. And so happiness becomes a question of what are some things that I can do today to make myself happier? One, because a small burst matter. And two, the other thing is that what happens is we get what we call upward spirals of positive emotion. So most of us are more familiar with like downward spirals, right? Like one thought and then like the world is ending or like we're dying. We also go the other way too. And so,

It's like, say for example, you receive a nice email today, right? The next email that you reply to, you're like a little bit nicer when you're responding. You have that upward spiral, right? A little bit more pep in your step. And so those small bursts, think about them like reps, and that's actually how we are happier, is we do things on a regular basis that make them happy. It kind of makes me think of, yeah, it kind of makes me think of Tim Ferriss, who's somebody I've followed and read for years, talking about...

achieving things and how saying what's this quote like 10x effort or 10x results doesn't always require 10x effort that it's the small incremental changes over time that will lead to that huge result. And you know, I've heard that and thought of it many times in relation to goal setting, but never really in to the idea of happiness and cultivating and practicing happiness. And one thing I've often wondered about and I'm guessing this is something that you might touch on is one thing that I've always enjoyed doing is kind of,

Finding the common thread between people that are high achievers or living really, you know, living happy, healthy lives. What are the common threads that you see? You know, and I see a lot of like, well, you know, exercise, good sleep hygiene, meditation, journaling, and gratitude practices. I see a lot of that and I've never been really good at that. There's times in my life.

When I am, I tend to overcomplicate things and sit there and be like, oh, what do I really feel grateful for right now? And then I struggle instead of, so, but I've noticed in the times when I have done it more regularly, it does become easier, but I'm wondering, can you speak to that a bit? What kind of an impact does a gratitude practice have on cultivating happiness?

I love this question. And before I answer, I just want to really highlight, just put a little exclamation, smiley face next to something you said, which is that sleep, nutrition, and physical activity are foundational for our happiness. So all three of those things are very important. What we see on days that people exercise and move their body, they're happier than on days they're not. And even as little as 10 minutes of physical activity per day.

can greatly increase your odds of being happy. Sleep, we all know what it's like to have a good sleep and how we feel in the morning versus the evening, don't we? We know that. I know when my kids have too, when my kids have and when they have not, I'm very aware of this as well. And so those are all really important, but I generally don't find that I'm spending a lot of my time talking about those because it's kind of like that's not new information. We all kind of know that at this point, right? Knowing, so.

I also listened to the Tim Ferriss podcast. Oh, love it. And I heard this quote, like, it's gotta be like eight, 10 years ago. I don't know how long the podcast has been on, but this is like, it feels like forever. It feels like he's like, oh, gee, podcasters, but it feels like today. Yeah. It was around the time he first like interviewed Arnold Schwarzenegger, I think that this podcast came out with this gentleman, Derek Sivers. He's had Derek Sivers on a couple of times, I think, but Derek had this quote and I use it in my talks a lot. And Derek said, if more information was the answer,

we'd all be billionaires with perfect abs. And it speaks to this point of like knowing versus doing, right? Like knowing is not enough. It's like, we see that quote all the time, like knowledge is power, knowledge is power. And I'm always like, no, knowledge is potential power. It's what we do, it's what we know that matters, right? And so we all know we're supposed to sleep well. We all know we're supposed to, you know, get out and get some sunlight, move our body. That's, it's the sort of the execution piece.

So we'll sort of tie in a little bow around that. Those are all really important. And then let's talk about some things that you may not know as much about, like gratitude, for example. So what I love about gratitude is, and practicing gratitude at its most basic level, like the most simplest form is taking time to appreciate the good things in your life, taking time to think about or reflect on or write about the things that you're thankful for in your life. And then like, I get this question a lot, is it better to write it down? And so in like a good,

better best situation, it's good to think about things that we're grateful for. And that does have some benefit, but if we really want to maximize, and I bet if you are listening to this podcast right now, you're one of those people that wants to get the most out of everything that they do, right? And so writing it down is better than just thinking about it. The other thing is, it's a key thing about a gratitude practice is you can't...

Just every day, right? I'm grateful for my French Bulldog, Jocko. I mean, I am grateful for my French Bulldog, Jocko. He's sleeping right beside me right now. And I don't think his snoring is loud enough to be picked up on the audio. But if at any point during this podcast, you are listening and you hear snoring, it's my Bulldog. Hey, I hope you're enjoying today's podcast. I just wanted to take a quick break because if you're listening, you probably know what we do here at Invigor Medical Podcast, but maybe not what we do at invigormedical .com. So let me introduce us.

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This is gonna be my one mention of Andrew Huberman. Oh my gosh, Andrew Huberman, here we go. For anyone that hasn't seen any podcasts up to this point, I'm a huge Andrew Huberman fan, and talking about OG episodes, like the first 100 episodes of the Huberman Lab podcast, his Bulldog Costello's in the background. Oh, no kidding. And he's like, I apologize if you guys can hear it, and then at a certain point he died, and it was a whole sad thing. Oh, so sad, but everybody loved him at that point, because he Everybody loves Costello, because he's always in the background.

I would suggest keeping your bulldog in the background because he's just going to become very endearing. He's just going to become a part of everything. And if he wakes up, you just can pick him up so we can all take a little peek. I love a little dog. Yes. But the specificity of continuing, if I say every day, oh, I'm thankful for my kids, I'm thankful for Jack, I'm thankful for Lucy, it doesn't feel. have to mix it up because we're creatures of habit. It's like,

When you get a new car, right, in psychology we call it hedonic adaptation, but what happens is something good happens and you see like a big burst, or something really bad happens, like you go through a breakup and you plummet, but you don't stay at either the high or the low forever, right? We tend to go back. And so one of the things is maybe one day thinking about people that you're grateful for, things that you've learned, body parts that you like, podcasts that you're grateful, whatever it is, but mixing it up. And the other thing is, is that,

When you can make it a bit more descriptive or a full sensory experience, so if you're grateful, on the weekend I went to my friend's house and we just decided to be inspired by Martha Stewart and we decided that we could make a pizza on our own. Oh my gosh, the dough, get the whole thing wet. Wow. So obviously I didn't go like Martha Stewart. It tasted good. It just wasn't pretty. Right.

So I wrote about that experience, right? But when I was writing about it, it wasn't just the like focusing on, you know, that it didn't go well, but it was like, how did the pizza taste? What did it smell like? What did the dough look like? When you can involve more of your senses in that experience, that is better. And then the other thing is, is jury's still out about like frequency intensity. Like, do we need to do it every day? Can it be once a week? We jury's still out.

But what I do think, my opinion, is that when we think about those small bursts of joy that we can do every day, taking time to reflect on something that we're grateful for is a great opportunity to create a small burst that doesn't cost anything, doesn't take a lot of time, and really could be done anywhere. The one thing I will say, personally, so all of the tips and tools and strategies that I read about in research, I try, right? Because I want to try myself too. And so with gratitude, what I've been doing lately,

It's almost like gratitude 2 .0 where if I'm writing about someone or something in my journal or thinking about it, I'll then send a text or a voice notes because it's really nice to feel gratitude towards people. But when you can actually take that additional step to take 10 seconds to leave a quick voice note. I'm just so grateful that you took the time on Sunday to make pizza with me and we had so much stuff like whatever it is. That's something that.

It's like a double boost because I get a boost in my happiness because I reflecting on what I'm grateful for. My friend or whoever's on the receiving end of the message gets a boost. But then I also get another boost because I also did something that made them happy. So that's where I'm at these days with my gratitude practice. It's sort of the sharing of it, you know? So one of my best friends, he for years has been so good about like just sending that message, like saying the thing out loud about, you know,

someone that you're thinking and that's kind and you're grateful for them and something like get specific about what it is. And we've been friends for years now and I noticed that that has really rubbed off on me. And there's a whole backstory to that for him with a friend that committed suicide years ago that he was supposed to have dinner with and you know, run into the gym and all this and he wished he had said those things, you know? And so now I realize even just like if I'm like in the grocery store,

I'm like, oh my gosh, girl, I love your sweater. You look so great in that color kind of thing, you know, and it's like a veritable stranger. But I noticed even just from that, I like feel, I'm like, they light up, they feel better. I light up, I feel better. There's like this reciprocal energy exchange thing that's happening. So I love, I never really thought about that in the sense of the gratitude practice though, and the making sense if you're writing down something specific about someone and then how much larger that gets when you,

put it out there. And I like think about like the mysticism of life and like what's happening in energy fields that we're completely unaware of. But I believe that there are there's like these this ripple effects when we do things like that. So there actually is science. Yes, I love it. The UK published the British Medical Journal from the Framingham Heart Study. And what they find is that our happiness actually spreads three degrees from us. Wow. So when we focus on our happiness, it not only affects the people that we meet, but then also the people that they meet.

And the other piece of it is, I think the number one question I get asked from parents is like, how do I help my children be happy? And my answer is, unfortunately, we can't force anybody to be happy. That's just the truth of it, right? But as a parent, one of the best things, or even as an adult,

Modeling our behavior for other people is the best way to encourage behavior change in another. And children in particular, they're like sponges, right? Kids don't often hear what you say, they watch what you do. And so not only is it in terms of this gratitude example where you're cooking the time to share your gratitude with someone else, you're also modeling what that's like for them and for anyone else that's with you. And so you really do see this.

sort of like you said, this halo ripple butterfly, whatever you want to call it, effect where it actually does go beyond that. So I think that's pretty cool. That's incredible. So I do have a question, and this kind of goes along the gratitude practice lines of, I was just thinking, it's great to get to the end of the day and be like, oh, I feel so grateful for these things. But what do you do in a situation where you get to the end of the day and it was just a really hard day or you're just like beat down? And I think this could also be a bigger question for just like happiness in general, right?

Because happiness, I think, is something that a lot of people can struggle with, of like, maybe I'll never be happy. Maybe, you know, they ask these types of questions where it's just like, you know, so for people that are going through hard things, what is your advice to them?

I love that you asked this question and I will answer it in one second. But first I want to say that, so I didn't realize that when you study happiness, a lot of people assume you're happy all the time. And so I just want to make it abundantly clear that yes, I am a happiness researcher and no, I'm not happy all of the time. But that's also not the point. So the goal, like in all honesty, because remember how I mentioned, I didn't even know you could study happiness until the second year of my PhD.

And so a lot of times, researchers pick topics because they're personally interested in that for whatever reason. And so when I was like, this light bulb went off, like, Hey, I can study happiness. It naturally invites questions like reflecting on your own life. Like, do you feel happy? Right. And so I was going through a divorce at the time. So my answer was no. But what I realized was that, you know, I thought, okay, like I'm this.

second year, super naive grad student whose goal now that she knows you can study happiness is like, I'm thinking to myself, I don't like feeling sad. I don't like feeling anxious. I don't like feeling down. So why don't I just figure out how to get rid of all of those feelings and just be happy all the time. So when I first started studying happiness, my goal was to figure out how to be happy all the time. Then I got into the literature and sometimes in the literature, it's called like sort of the dark side of happiness where what we see is that

people that try to be happy all the time, end up being less happy than other people. Interesting. And when I first read that, I was like, wait a second, like, how can that be? Like I thought about like weight loss, right? Like if your weight loss goal is, you know, X amount of pounds, even if you don't get there, like at least you're trending in the right direction. That's what I thought. Right. But then I thought about it some more, rethought it. Thank you, Adam Grant. And what I realized is that what happens when we don't reach a goal.

Like if someone was to take a microphone and put it in our head and people heard the self -talk that we have going on, we get hard on ourselves, we get down on ourselves, right? We're not that kind to ourselves sometimes. And so what I learned is that the goal in life is not to be happy all the time. It's impossible to be happy all the time. So if we set the goal to be happy all the time, we've set an impossible goal. So we're never gonna reach it. And so really in terms of healthy psychological functioning, it's about embracing a full spectrum of emotion, right? Like if we're at a funeral, it doesn't make sense.

be happy. Grief makes sense, sadness makes sense, whatever it is. So that just to sort of circle back to your question, I'm not happy all the time, but that's not the point. And the reality is that we all have bad days, myself included, and that's part of being human. So two things on that. One is when we're having a bad day and we've all had them, it's

If you've ever tried to be happy through when you're having a bad day, right? Like just sort put on a smile, put on your rose colored glasses and just like fake it till you make it. You end up feeling worse. What ends up happening? You feel worse. You're more tired. You have less energy. It doesn't work. So in research sometimes we use the term toxic positivity, right? Which is like when someone tells you, oh, just like look on the bright side, keep your chin up. Like whatever sort of platitude they want to throw at you. What we see is that...

toxic positivity leads to emotional suppression. So when we're actually not feeling our emotions and when we suppress our emotions, they don't go away. They actually get stronger. We call this amplification. And so instead of trying to be happy, it's really about embracing that term of emotions. And like, to be honest, like I will sometimes just have a day and there's not a particular cause. Like sometimes we can identify our bad mood or why we're unhappy for a specific reason. But sometimes let's have a day where I'm just a little bit grumpy or whatever. I just,

I now give myself the grace to have a bad day. And maybe that means that I'm not as productive that day, or maybe that day means that I changed my plan for what I'm going to do and just chill or, you know, quote some time for me because the next day I always wake up with more energy, right? We'll have to give ourselves the grace and the time to be, and we all have bad days. And so really, I think a lot of times when we're feeling more challenging emotions, you know, like sadness, like depression, like anxiety, we think that they're bad because

we're not as familiar with them, but they're just different, right? And sometimes those emotions, like I never use the word positive or negative when I'm talking about emotions because an emotion isn't inherently positive or negative with information, right? If you're feeling stressed or anxious, but you were unaccountable to something at work, that's probably a signal that you weren't responsible or that you didn't, you know, you didn't do what you were saying you're gonna do. So I love that you asked this question. We all can't be happy and myself included, we all have bad days and we have to give ourselves the grace to be human.

on each and every day is the days that we're happy and the days that we're not feeling happy. I was just going to kind of wrap up a thought there of like, so in that case, maybe a gratitude practice is good when you're feeling grateful, but like this might speak to a reason for like a more general journaling practice where like just whatever you're feeling that day, if you're feeling, if you're wrestling with like this emotion of like this, today was a hard day being able to just get that and acknowledge that in a journal, like that can be very cathartic.

Yeah, you know, and I think that this speaks to there's not a one right formula or one right way. So some days you must, might just be sort of in a weird funk and maybe focusing on something you're grateful for shifts your mindset and then your mood is different. And on some days maybe you're not and it's better to do, you know, sort of stream of consciousness writing or maybe that day it's better to just go like.

I used to teach yoga to UFC fighters during my university. So every once in a while, I just want to go hit some bags or just do some boxing with someone. So maybe it's a day that you're upset and maybe that's a better outlet. So it's different, right? And that's where the piece about learning about ourselves is so important. The other thing is sometimes we're having a bad day. One of the best things that we can do is go do something nice with someone else. Because often when we're so in our own bad mood,

We're so internally focused that taking the focus off me, I, whatever it is, even if we're in a bad mood and just like, how can I be in a place to help someone else can sometimes be a great way. Sometimes you just need to shift our mood, right? Like sometimes, you know, you're in a bad mood and you can put on like a funny, like comedy show and then you're feeling better after or some days it's like today I need to quit my day. It's different all the time, right? So finding those things that work for us, knowing that there's no perfect formula. There's no.

one thing that's going to work every time. It's really about getting curious with ourselves. Like, what do I feel that I need right now? And sort of giving ourselves the flexibility to sort of answer that question every time. Yeah. I kind of had a little bit of a kind of follow up question after talking about like, what do you do when you're just like having a bad day, not happy? But I had this thought when you were kind of describing like you have the wide range of emotions. So I'm like a huge, huge Brene Brown fan.

And I love her quote, you cannot selectively numb emotion. And when she talks about feeling being like on a scale and like if, cause you were talking about like feeling happy, you're just, I want to feel happy. I don't want to feel anything else. Right. And if like, this is the middle, the way she described it, there's a scale and one end is happiness and at one hand, you know, blissful happiness, I should say. And the other is like the absolute pits of despair. If you're numbing all of this stuff, that's negative.

She like visually showcased it as, you know, you're coming inward towards the middle on the negative side, but this positive happy side simultaneously is going at the same speed. As you're like trying to protect yourself and numb yourself from all of these negative things that you never want to feel, because all you want to feel is happiness, you actually lessen your capacity to feel happiness. And I was reminded of that when that's what you were saying, because I feel like you were basically saying the exact same thing with different words. You're like, if all you're focused on is being happy, you're actually going to be less happy.

Right? Because you have to kind of like numb and ignore other emotions that you're likely feeling. You're just rejecting. Right? There's no space for it. And I just love that. Yeah, I love that. And now and because it's it's tough and it's like it's been really impactful for me as a parent too, because when my kids are feeling sadness and I also went through a divorce and had kids at the same time. And the thing I wanted the most was to save my children from that pain, you know, and I couldn't. That was so, so.

I'm gonna get emotional. Yeah, but it was so hard because I wanted to save them from that. But I realized the best thing that I could do is just be present with them in that pain, you know, and and celebrate the the joy that we could. And so that kind of leads me a little bit to the next question is like when you are like it's not just you're having a bad day. You're having a bad time.

you know, you're going through it in some way and it's not just the day and there's something hanging over you, you know, whether it's you're going through a divorce or you have a sick family member or there's just been a huge change in your family situation or you, you know, lost somebody, whatever it may be, you know, it's not, I'm just having a bad day. It's there's a, there's a weight that you're carrying and you're holding. So when that's the case, how do we cultivate happiness in our lives? So,

I don't think that all situations require us or necessitate us to be happy, right? Like if we're going through a divorce and it's painful, like it doesn't make sense to be happy. You sometimes like you think about, or you say like, if you don't have the highs, you can't appreciate the lows and not that you need those or they're necessary. But I think that we have to give ourselves the grace to know that we can't be happy all the time. But like you said, there's a big distinction between just like having a bad day and taking a night or like going to the spa or.

you know, hanging out with your dog all afternoon just going to kind of fix that versus going through really hard things. Part of the reality of being a human in the world is at some point we are going to face hard things. Some of us listening right now may be going through something hard right now or have a friend or a loved one that is that we can't change, right? Like an illness or like the death of a loved one or a divorce. And so the way I think about it is like, I mentioned how I think about happiness like a muscle, right? So,

We do these things on a daily basis that make us happy. We put in the reps. So over time, our muscle gets stronger. So if you were to imagine in your head, like a graph, it's like the line is going up, right? It's like with time and happiness on the X and Y axis, right? Over time, our happiness, which is on the Y, is going to go up. Sure. But what happens is that it's going up, we're doing our thing, and then boom, something hard happens, right? A pandemic happens, a job loss happens, a divorce happens, whatever it is. Our happiness goes down. That's natural, because something hard happened.

And then over time, this is where, you know, and the word resilience has been thrown out a lot the last couple of years, but this is where resilience comes in. The resilience is our ability when something hard happens, how do I bounce back? It actually comes from an engineering term of like bouncing back, like rubber bouncing back. There's also another term which is talked about, not as much. I don't think it has got as good a PR agent as resilience did in the pandemic, but flourishing.

So resilience is about bouncing back to where you were before. But for a lot of us, like I'd be willing to bet every single person listening to this podcast, they don't want to just get back to where they were. You want to grow through it, learn from it, have the experience make you stronger. And so then what happens is if you imagine that line sort of going up, it actually goes above. So it's sort of this zigzaggy uptrend line as opposed to a straight linear line because nothing in life is straight, linear or easy all of the time. That's life. So what happens is,

As we start to grow that happiness muscle, our highs get higher, our lows, those difficult things, they don't go away. They just get higher too. So we're in a better place to cope with them in a more resilient way. And coping with something in a resilient way doesn't mean practice pretending to be happy all the time, right? It means that we're humans with a full spectrum of emotions. I...

I'd be willing to bet you're also a fan of Dr. Susan David. Yeah. I feel like the two of bet our podcast list and things, our book lists, our bookshelves are probably very similar. One of my favorite quotes from Susan David, Dr. Susan David is that it's normal, healthy, and a good thing to experience the full range of the emotional experience. You know, and sort of.

giving ourselves the grace and the compassion when we are going through hard things to go through hard things. I love that. To not try to force. Because the other thing is like when you try to pretend it doesn't work, it doesn't work anyway. You know what I mean? It'll come back up eventually. It's hard. Yeah. Like I remember, so I was married then I was in a four year relationship. I remember when that relationship ended being so sad, like the pain that like hurts your soul.

And then I remember thinking like, wow, like my first thought was like, oh my gosh, this is so painful. And then my next thought that popped in my mind was like, oh my gosh, I'm alive. Like I gave myself that range. Like I love so hard that this is what happens on the other side, but it's actually with a very, it made me feel alive, right? You somehow feel like it just, it's not that it's joy or bliss or rapture or good, but a lot of our emotions and the variety of them.

are part of the human experience, right? And it's about living. We get one part of life. Like how do we live our experience as opposed to just going through the motions, mooting everything, you know, just whatever that is. Like we sort of have a choice. We want to watch life in black and white TV or in an HD 4K, whatever the TV is by this day, you know? I love that you brought that up because I think that's something that I've kind of found and learned as I've gone through therapy and learned things like the internal family systems and is holding the paradox.

Because I think that so often we may finally give ourselves permission to feel sad, but we don't give ourselves permission to feel the joy and gratitude simultaneously. So we become binary, I'm this or I'm that, you know? And so it's like, if you're feeling really sad and then you're like, oh, I feel happy. And it's like, oh, well, I shouldn't, because somebody just died. So I definitely should not be feeling happy right now, right? I shouldn't feel joy. I should just feel sadness. And so you said give the grace, give yourself the permission.

whatever it may be, to feel those things. And it's so funny you brought that up about a relationship because the first really like big relationship I got into after my divorce that ended in heartbreak. And it was the first person I said, I love you to after it ended and I was so sad and I felt so let down. And I remember also going, I'm so glad I let myself fall. I can do that. I can love again.

Oh, I'm so glad I can love again. I'm so glad. And I was feeling it exactly at the same time that I was feeling so let down and hurt and betrayed and all of these other things. But it was so freeing to me. And I think one of the first like biggest examples I felt of holding that paradox. And it's something I still struggle with every day. I don't think it's like happiness in place you arrive.

Right? I'm not just like, boop, great at holding everything all together. Did it, strong, you know, read the book, I get it. You know? But I have to remind myself, because I will feel myself shooting on myself. I should feel happy right now, or I should feel sad or whatever. So I'm so glad that you brought that up about like the complexity and the wide range of emotion.

that we get to feel as humans. And how cool that is. Even my son sometimes being like, mom, don't you just wish there was nobody died ever? Did you just wish that? And I honestly answered him. I'm like, you know, but I'm not sure that I do. Because I'm not sure that I would feel the intense amounts of joy in quiet, special moments with you and with other people I love if I wasn't aware of the finite.

time that I have with you. You know? And that, that like just saying that gives me chills. Cause whoo, let's go to church. Come on Jillian. Let's do some stuff here. You know, cause this is such big important work that you're doing and I'm so glad that we have you on today. Yeah.

So good. One last comment on what you said. I'm so with you about like, I also read a lot of stoic philosophy. Oh, I love stoic philosophy. Okay, now you're preaching to me. I love it. Okay. So I read the Daily Stoic every morning. I read a lot of Marcus Aurelius, right? You probably listen to Ryan Holiday too. Between us, we've got the same. I love it. We got it all. I was actually going to bring up Mansour for Meaning later, but it's - Now, Victor Frankel. Yeah. So -

I, from reading Stoke Philosophy, there's a concept called memento mori, right? Remember your death, remember you will die. And I have it in, I got a cricket, you know, those like, I decided I want to be crafty this year. So I got a cricket and I printed out memento mori and I put it on the mirror in my bathroom. And so then my sister came over and she's like, what does this memento mori mean?

And I'm like, oh, like remember your mortality. Remember you're going to die. And she thought it was like the most morbid thing that I did. And I explained to her, I'm like, no, when you remember that you were going to die, it helps bring into perspective that you are living. Brings it into focus. Right? Yeah. It really does. And I want that reminder because I want.

to be present, I don't want to blink and look back in my life to be over. Like I really want to be present in my life. And one of the ways to do that is to do that. Chilin, you're still speaking my language because I have a single tattoo on my wrist and it says, be here now. It's my reminder for presence. But get this, I'm literally considering my second tattoo for a phrase that I heard recently. I can't even remember where I heard it, but the phrase is, it's later than you think.

And I want to get it as like the stem of a dandelion with dandelion seeds blowing away. Like the time is yes. I would try to show I got goosebumps when you said that like truth. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And so it's so funny that you said you put that on your feeling that if there's anybody out there listening to this that's like, Oh, she could have tattoo. What should I get? Now there's going to be a ton of people. Oh my gosh. That's fine. Take the idea. If it helps you like live in presence and enjoy like absolutely. But that's just, um,

I'm feeling some major kinship with you, Jillian. That's great. I'm so glad we got to have you on today and I feel like let's do it again. I was going to share just one quick thought and just to add into everything. I have a tradition of listening to Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl every winter because it's set in the winter time. For those that don't know, it's about a psychologist who went into the concentration camps and came out with insights and amazing

like amazing insights on life and things along those lines. And something I'm going through a little bit of a hard time with my family at the moment, but listening to it really gave me a lot of time to reflect about that. And one of the big things he talks about and something that actually you've talked about too is that happiness cannot be pursued or meaning cannot be pursued. It has to ensue, right? It just has to happen.

And another big thing that Victor Frankl talks about is that if there's meaning in anything, there has to be meaning in pain, there has to be meaning in suffering. And so by really focusing on the foundations of your health, of focusing on the foundation of your sleep, of all these things that lead to eudaimonia, right, that we're talking about, that lead to a flourishing life, the reason why you have to build that foundation is to get you through the hard times so that you can actually make it out to the other side and enjoy the good times. So.

I agree with Natalie. I've absolutely loved having you on the show and we would love to have you back at some time in the future. Thank you, Jillian, for making the time to be with us today. Oh my gosh. Thank you for the work. This so happy. Thank you so much for having me. me happy too. What a great conversation. made me happy as well. We're all happy. I hope it made all of you who listened happy as well. And Jillian, if people want to find out more about your work and they want to follow you, where can they find you?

Yeah, so my website is my name, JillianMandich .com. I'm Jillian with a G, G -I -L -L -L I love it spelled that way. M -A -N -D -I -C -H. Everything else linked up from there. My work stuff, social stuff, it's all, that's a good place to go. Or you can just search me on Instagram. I think I'm Dr. Dr. JillianMandich on Instagram. Awesome. Thank you so much for making the time. I hope that we can have you back again in the future. Yes, I would love to, yes. Thanks for tuning in to the Invigor Medical Podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can support us by liking and subscribing.

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