Emma Seppälä

We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf Y, thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Emma Seppola, Science director at Stanford University's Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. She is

also the author of The Happiness Track. Emma as co director of the Yale College Emotional Intelligence Project, she consults with fortune leaders and employees on building a positive organization and teaches at the Yale School of Management's executive education program. She graduated from Yale, Columbia and Stanford. If you value the content we put out each week, then we need your help. As the show has grown, so have our expenses and time commitment. Go to one you feed dot

net slash support and make a monthly donation. Our goal is to get to five percent of our listeners supporting the show. Please be part of the five percent that make a contribution and allow us to keep putting out these interviews and ideas. We really need your help to make the show sustainable and long lasting. Again, that's one you Feed dot net slash Support. Thank you in advance for your help. And here's the interview with Emma Sepola. Hi, Emma,

welcome to the show. Thanks, I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to have you on. You've written a new book called The Happiness Track, and we'll talk about that shortly, but I'd like to start like we usually do, with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like

greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in

the work that you do. I definitely agree that the one you feed is stronger in the sense that the people you surround yourself with, the values of the people around you, the values you've learned, and also the attention you put towards fostering traits like compassion kindness in yourself. At the same time, I also think that we're naturally kind and compassionate. That's our natural instinct. It's just that

it gets overshadowed. Sometimes. It's not just about cultivating those qualities because you see them naturally in children, and we know that from research. We see that children naturally act altruistically and that adults do to Actually, when you don't give them a lot of time to think, they are more likely to do the kind act, the fair act. So I just think certain things do push us towards acting according to the more negative wolf, and that those

things are things like stress. I think when we're under a lot of stress, we don't necessarily have the ban with within ourselves or to act according to our best self. Sometimes people act in a way that's quoe evil because they're a little ignorant of all of the facts of they have a skewed vision perhaps, But I think that at our core were good, and I think the research also points to that when we look at it, Yeah, nothing like some stress to to bring out those, uh,

those more challenging behaviors. I think it's easy to be good when things are going good. It's when things get challenging that it becomes harder. Yes, And that's where activities like meditation or activities that really foster calmness and contemplation and while being within you like even taking walks in nature and taking time to unplug and slow down, they can really help to reset your nervous systems so that you act according to your best self, that natural tendency

we all have. Your book is called The Happiness Track, and the subtitle is how to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate your success. So you're not writing this just from here's how to be happy perspective, but also from a perspective of in order to be successful, it's your helps to be happy. Can you talk about that connection for a minute. We'll start with the story of one of the Stanford undergraduates that participated in a class on the Signs of Happiness that my colleague and I

founded a number of years ago. And the student said she had to drop out of the class. And when my fellow colleague instructor asked well, why, the student said, because it goes against everything I've ever learned. My parents told me I have to be very successful, and when I asked them how to be very successful, they said, you have to work very, very hard. And when I asked them, how do I know when I'm working hard enough?

They said when you're suffering. And can seem like a shocking story, but really it's it's something that is all around us. Um that theory is there. We have a sense that no pain, no gain. If you don't work yourself into the ground, you're just not going to compete as well. You're not going to you come out first, You're not going to do better than others. Etcetera. But if you look at the data, if you look at the research, we have it all wrong. This is a

false theory. And that's why we're seeing burnout across industries. We're seeing that seventy of the American workforce is disengaged at work. We're seeing that of doctors visits are attributed to stress. There's something going on. There's a pain point that we all feel that we've all seen, if not in ourselves, then in people around us. That this theory of success, the idea that in order to be successful you have to postpone or sacrifice your happiness, is simply false.

It's not working. At least you can see it's not working. And so when I looked at the data, I saw again and again that if you actually do things to take care of yourself and the people around you, you actually are more creative, more productive, You're more focused, more charismatic, and more successful in the long run, more innovative in

your thinking, more influential. The list goes on. So was from seeing this pain point in the people around me, very successful environments like Silicon Valley, Yale University, Manhattan, different places where I worked, and so I wrote this book because I saw this pain point and I wanted to show people the data that there's another way, and it's a better way and you're not going to burn out

and you're going to do better. Yeah, you talk about six major false theories that are behind our current notions of success. So the things that we think are important to be successful. You're saying that a lot of these things aren't true. Um, maybe we could talk about what a couple of those are. Well. One of them, I think an obvious one is the idea that you can't have success without stress. Um, people just buy into that. And it's so interesting because you see fuel ourselves with stress.

We overschedule ourselves, we wait till the last minute to get things done. We fuel up with caffeine, our energy drinks. We have bought into this idea that the only way we can be productive is thanks to adrenaline coursing through our veins. And then we wonder why we're so exhausted by two pm, why we fall on the couch when we get home after work while we don't have energy, why we have sleep problems, And it's because we're constantly

tapping into the spider flight system. And you know, it's nothing new, this idea that stress is bad for you, but we have still bought into the fact that we need it. Somehow, we've become kind of addicted to adrenaline. But the problem is that's why we're burning out. That's why we're seeing such hype burnout levels. If you look in the animal world, we're only supposed to feel stressed a few minutes our life. Those are the words of a psychologist at Stanford wrote a book called the y

Zebras Don't get Ulcers. But the idea is that our stress response is only meant to be for fight or flight, not all day constantly. And so when we constantly fuel ourselves up like that, we are burning through all of our systems, were burning through our immune system, We're burning through so many things in our body. We're using up so much energy, and then we wonder why we don't have energy, and then we just keep fueling up. The problem comes is that when we're constantly in this high

adrenaline mode, we're also not able to focus. We lose our ability to make good decisions, our emotional intelligence. Drops were not able to communicate as easily with other people, were not able to take a broader perspective when it's needed, and our immune system is compromised. We've all experienced this and there's plenty of data on that too, so we

really need to rethink this idea. But if you actually take time to do things like meditation or whatever it is that calms you down, and if you actually make time for that in your life, you'll see that your attention is broader, your memory improves, you're able to connect

better with other people. You're actually more powerful. If you think about who's more powerful when they arrive at a negotiation table, for example, the person who's super anxious a negotiation table or job interview or first date, you name it, the person who's really anxious and really wants the job or the negotiation outcome, whatever it is. Or the other person who has really the calm, who was really centered,

who could just walk away and be just fine. Clearly it's the calm one, and yet calmness has somehow it's not a quote sexy feeling. We were always talking about I'm so excited to see you. We don't sam so calm to see you. So in the United States in particular, we value high intensity, high intensity stress, high intensity excitement,

So we know that also from data. When we think of happiness, we think of high intensity emotions like excitement and thrill and um, that's all fine and good, but what we're buying into is the life of high intensity all the time. And then we're wondering why we're exhausted. We also wondering why there's such high anxiety levels when

we're constantly doing it to ourselves in some ways. And that's why things like meditation um, yoga UM, spending more time in nature, unplugging in the evenings, unplugging on the weekends, allowing yourself to have a little technology detox when you don't absolutely need to be on your various instruments of communications. So that's just one of the theories. Another theory is this idea that we have to be so focused on our niche all the time, so focused on our field.

I need to be number one in my field. I need to know everything in order to be innovative, in order to be creative. So the number one attribute that CEOs look for in the incoming workforce is creativity above everything else, above integrity above work, ethic everything. And it makes sense if you think about it, because creativity and innovative thinking is so needed in any field that you're

in to excel um and to get ahead. And so the mistake that we make is that we are constantly so focused on our fields, so focused on learning, and we are always thinking about the next thing on our to do list. But as a consequence, we actually prevent

ourselves from getting into a creative mindset. So if you look at the data, our brain is most likely to come up with a breakthrough solution when we're idle, when we're in the shower or in that moment right before sleep, or when we're maybe in the car just zonning out listening to music. And there's a reason for that. When we're in an idle situation, our brain is actually an

active problem solving mode. So you'll probably notice that you'll find a solution to something you've been pondering on forever in a moment you least expected. The idea is that you need to take time off, you need to take time to be idle, and if you think about it, you could go all day long, never ever accessing that creative mindset, because people roll over in bed and check their email, and then if you wait in line, people

are checking their emails. All those moments when you used to wait for the bus and just space out our daydream are spent on our devices. And then when we're at work, we're constantly focused and learning and so forth, which is great. But creativity actually needs you to take that time off. So you know, even if it's in the name of productivity, take some time off, which we also know is so good for your engagement when you

get back to work. We know from research that when you take time off of work, when you're in the evenings, on the weekends and so forth, you come back much more engaged, You come back much more energized. So it's a great way to manage your energy too. And something again we've forgotten. Hey everybody, it's Eric here and I want to talk about our Patreon donation campaign. Thank you to those of you who have donated so far. It

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Thanks so much, And back to the interview you talk in the book a lot about managing your energy, so not managing your time, but managing your energy. Chair a little bit more about what that means, and then maybe talk some about how we can manage our energy better. Yeah, so one of the ways, you know, what I just discuss is that slowing down that adrenaline rush or curving

it in some way. You know, it's fine to have a coffee, or if you're the kind of person who likes to be last minute to get things done because that motivates you, that's fine. But just watch how much are you fueling your life with adrenaline, because that's burning through your battery at high speed. One thing that you might want to do, and that also brings out the greatest creativities to alternate high and low intensity tasks in

your day. For example, if you have a presentation to prepare that's high intensity, focused, concentrated work, do that for the first hour at work, But the second hour, do the things that allow you to mind wander, to be less focused and less intensely focused. Clean out your desk, m enter data, something less intense, and then you can

go back to an intense activity. So kind of sandwiching high and low intensity activities like that can not only help you restore your energy, manage your energy, but also will help you be more creative because in those tasks that demand less focus, you're able to mind wander, which actually leads to those creative moments. And research shows that when you go back to your high intensity activity, let's say you go back to that presentation and keep refining it,

you're going to be more focused. So that's one way. The other way, obviously, like I said earlier, is managing that how much adrenaline, how much caffeine, how much speed you live with in your life. And finally, meditation is huge. I mean, at this point, everybody meditates. At this point, everybody has heard of it. At least. It's so simple, and yet it's so powerful. We live at a time and age when we're taking in more information than ever before.

So a two thousand nine studies show that we take in thirty five thousand gigabytes of information every week, which is enough to crash computer in a couple of weeks. That was thready five US information a day. But that was in two thousand nine. The iPhone had barely come out. I don't even want to know what it is at this point. But we are in a deluge of information, and and then we're wondering why our thoughts are racing,

why we're feeling stressed, why we're feeling overwhelmed. We've come to a point where we absolutely have to unplug in order to create some balance. Our ancestors, even our grandparents, even our parents, did not consume this much information, and we haven't yet found a balance. It's happened so fast.

So I think that's why a lot of people are finding this kind of revolutionary act of sitting and doing nothing, which is so revolutionary in our culture where we are such doings just for a few minutes, is actually balancing us out. And there's so much research at this point showing the very, very many, many benefits. You also talk about resilience, and you talk about how animals and children have a lot of natural resilience, and yet as adults we don't show that in the same way. Can you

tell me a little bit were about that. Well, we can see in children and in animals when they get upset or when they get stressed, they're over it in a couple of minutes. As soon as the stressors gone, they've moved on and they're doing just fine. And you'll notice that kids had a lot of energy, and the animals go right back to being very peaceful after they've been at the vet or they've been chased in, you know,

in the wild. And the reason for that is that after being in fight or flight mode, our body immediately goes back to a parasympathetic mode. From sympathetic the parasympathetic, which means from fight or flight to rest and digest to that mode in which the body can repair itself, restore all of the resources it's lost during the fight or flight moment so that it can be strong and

resilient in the face of another stressor. And that's why it's so important for us to make that time in our life when we can go into that parasympathetic calming state, which again in our culture we don't value, but it's so essential to manage our energy that way, and so that that's really critical and a very import Wortin way that you can do that is actually through your breath, and that sounds so simplistic, but it's not at all.

It is so powerful. I've done research with some of the most stressed individuals in our society, which your veterans returning from combat with trauma. Their nervous system has sometimes been turned into fight or flight mode and somehow hasn't been able to shut off again. It seems like that's what trauma can sometimes do to someone. They have trouble sleeping, They're always anxious, um, they're extremely jumpy in very normal,

non dangerous situations. They can't function normally. Their cognitive skills decline because their body is so taxed, their mind is so taxed from whatever experience it was that led to the trauma, and that doesn't allow them to live in the present moment and to move on with their lives. In one week of doing some breathing exercises with them through a nonprofit called Project Welcome Home Troops and learning a yoga based breathing exercise called Sudarcian Crea Yoga sky Breathing,

they were able to come back to themselves. They were able to sleep, began, their anxiety normalized, and they've moved on with their lives. I've been invited to officiate their weddings, They've have relationships, jobs, they've finished school. It's amazing they've just moved on. And how is it that something so simple as the breath can reset our nervous system. If it can do it for them, it can do it

for any of us. It is so powerful. So we know that from experience and but also um we know that from research that when we have different emotions, are breathing changes. For example, anxiety is short and shallow, anger short and shallow, sobbing, laughing, those are all examples of how emotions are tied to breathing. You come home, your exhaust it has been a long day. You sloped down on the sofa, and you sigh. Our breath changes with our feelings. The most interesting part is is that when

you change your breath, you can change your feelings. And there's really interesting research study that shows that too, So just with your breath you can change the state of your mind. And this is very powerful because think about it, when we're having a strong emotion, it's really really hard to control our emotions with our thoughts. Yet that's what people are always telling us. They're like, oh, calm down

when you're feeling not calm? I mean, is that helpful when people say that, or when we try to say that to ourselves, like oh, don't freak out or or when we're trying to go to sleep and we're saying go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep, it doesn't work. And we know from research to that what you resist persists in the mind. But with breathing, you can change how you feel. That's to me revolutionary because when you have peace of mind, when you have presence

of mind, you have everything. Um, So do you want me to share a story with you about how powerful breathing is? Sure? And then maybe you could share a little bit about how to do some of this breathing, like what people could do now an exercise they can use and I'm always interested in, like how long do you need to do the breathing exercise for? And so

maybe you can just share some of that also. Sure, so I'll share the story of a friend of ours who was an officer in the Marine Corps and he was in charge of the last vehicle on a convoy going across Afghanistan, and every other vehicle passed safely. Um, but his unfortunately hit an i e D and improvised

explosive device. In that moment, there's a huge explosion and when he looked down, his legs were mostly severed below the knee, and at that moment of shock, he remembered a breathing exercise, and it was a breathing exercise he learned about in a book for officers for very difficult moments, and that breathing and exercise involved breathing in for account of four, holding for account of four, breathing out for account of four, and then holding for account of four.

And thanks to the presence of mind that he had from that breathing, he was able to do his duty, which was first to check on his men, second to give orders to call for help. And third he looked down at his legs, he tourniqueted them himself. He propped them up. And only then when everything was set and down with everything was taken care of, and did he fall unconscious and um And later he was told had he not done that, he would have either bled to

death or fallen into a coma. That story, I think is such a powerful reminder to all of us that the breath is so incredibly important when it comes to presence of mind. It could even save a life. So I wanted to share that with you. And why is it that breathing is so powerful? Well, we know that when we inhale, our heart rate increases, and when we expel,

our heart rate decreases. We know that our breath and our emotions are tightly linked, So just lengthening your exhales can also really start to slow things down for you. So you're in a meeting, you're driving, you're feeling anxious, you're feeling angry, you're tired, whatever it is, you can actually change how you feel through your breath. Lengthening your exhales is going to calm down your heart rate. The sky breathing that veterans learned UM that really helped them

get over the trauma is UM. It takes a few days to learn, takes about three or four days to learn. So UM that is it's a twenty minute practice itself is very very powerful UM. And that that's something that people can learn UM. If they're better as they can learn it through Project Welcome Home Troops, and if they're just regular community members, they can learn it through an

organization called Art of Living. You described the four seconds in hold, four seconds, four seconds out, hold four seconds. I've heard all kinds of variations on that seven seconds, and obviously you can just do it any moment, but do you find that doing it for a set amount of time leads to benefits. Do you have any sort of like regular practice of it in the same way that people have like a meditation practice. Yes, I personally

do this guy breathing every single day. It's a twenty minute practice if you want to learn like a shorter one. This is funny because it's one I described in my book, and I never realized that my a book agent really took that chapter to heart and he started practicing this breathing that I'm about to describe. And he's kind of a type a New Yorker, and he was saying, oh, am, I've been doing that breathing from chapter two, and I'm feeling really good and I'm breathing at first I started

with five minutes. Now I'm being ten, I'm being fifteen, and he's really feeling a different So that was really funny and great news too. So you know that's was a very simple breathing technique where I just said breathe in for account of four, breathe out for account of eight. So you're you're basically breathing out for twice as long as you're breathing in, and just doing that for a couple of minutes to start your day would be terrific. But really it's something you can do at any point.

I mean, I like to meditate or do breathing exercise any time during the day when I'm feeling my energy dip a little bit, and I find it's such a healthier way to restore my energy and my peace of mind and my concentration and focus than any other substitute um such as the substance of sorts, which again leads to crashes. I really think of the analogy of plugging in my phone to fill up my battery. There no side effects, but you do feel much better. You're more focused,

You're just more on top of your game. You talk about another false theory of success and you say that it's you know, look out for number one. You know that we should look out primarily for ourselves. And then you go on to talk about a skill that you can develop that helps you to be happier and more successful. This show compassion to others. What is the value of

compassion in becoming more successful? I think a lot of people listen to show go Well, it's obvious with the value of compassion is, but outside of that, in more of a driving a successful career type way. Where does that play in. Well, we have this false view that in order to be successful you have to look out for number one and elbow people out of the way.

But if you look at the data again and again, it's those people who are kind, those people who support others, those people who have good, positive relationships with other, people who uplift others. Those are the people that get promoted. Those are the people that you want as colleagues. Those are the people you offer a job to. And so I'm not saying to be a doormat, no way, You've

got to have skill. But the idea is that if you are a kinder, more supportive, more giving person, you are the kind of person that everyone else wants to support as well, that everyone else wants on their team, that everyone else wants as a manager, as an employee, and so forth. It makes sense when you think about it,

But the data is showing that too. And so this is a really old paradigm, the lookout for number one, and it really needs to move on because when you are a kinder, more compassionate person, you actually benefit tremendously your happiness increases, your physical health increases, and you even

live longer. There's so much data to show that people who are kinder, who have very altruistic traits, actually are healthier and live longer, are happier, and live lives filled with meaning and purpose, which is so fulfilling in a in a very deep way that other forms of happiness or joy may not bring. Do you think that as our culture is changing, that this idea of being more compassionate and kind at work is more effective than maybe it would have been thirty or fifty years ago. Absolutely,

there's a trend towards this. So workplaces are bringing mindfulness in. But the next trend is compassion, and we're seeing that there's a lot of interest in compassion trainings, and managers are starting to understand that their employees are going to be more loyal to them. And there's research on that employees prefer to work for a boss where they're happy and where they have good positive relationships, then another workplace

where they get paid more. So we're always thinking, let's entice our employees with more material works, but more than anything, people want to be happy at their workplace. And that makes sense if you think of the number of hours they spend there, They spend most of their week there. What are some compassion practices that people are being trained in. I recommend Loving Kindness Meditation as a place to start. Um. I have a YouTube Loving Kindness Meditation up from the

research study that we did. I just put it up because people kept asking about the practice that we researched and seems to be quite popular. I also have a downloadable one off my website. People prefer to have it on their iPhone and that's at no charge. And we'll have a link to both those things in the show notes at when you feed dot net slash Emma, so people can link right to those things, as well as your Twitter and other accounts. Well, I think compassion is

a great place to wrap up the conversation. Thanks so much, Emma for taking the time to come on. Thank you for the work that you do, and it's been nice talking with you. Eric. It's my pleasure. Thank you so much for focusing on these positive aspects of human behavior and the human heart, and it's just so important for us to remember that and to focus on that. Excellent. Well, thank you, take care of you too, Bye bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you. Please consider

making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to one you Feed dot Net Slash Support. You can learn more about Emma Seppola and this podcast at One you Feed, dot Net Slash Emma