Transcript:

Episode 32: Happiness and Health

Warren:

All right, health hunters. I was looking outside today, and it was a little cloudy. I wasn’t that happy. I decided to bring on a really good friend of mine, Gillian Mandich, and she is a professor of happiness.

She’s a PhD candidate. She’ll have a degree in the area of happiness from the faculty of health science at West Central. Is it Western University? Is that what it is?

Gillian:

It is.

Warren:
Welcome, Gillian. It’s really an honor and pleasure. I got to spend a weekend with you, and you just lit up the room. You have this concept, and you’ve done research on this and how happiness is a habit and how it can transform your life. You’ve been on TV shows, talk shows, magazines.

This girl is killing it when it comes to the concept of happiness and sharing that message with the world. Happiness affects health big time at the hormonal level, even at the cellular level, the vibration level. It is a habit that we all need to get better at to make our health and life better. Gillian, why don’t you just introduce yourself a little bit more, why you’re so passionate about this topic, and how we can help your listeners today.

Gillian:

I’m so happy to be here. You’re absolutely right when you say that our happiness affects our health so much. My research, I do it in the faculty of health science because my area of interest is health promotion. What I want to know and what I want to study is how do we create the best, healthiest life ever?

What can we do? What can we learn? How can we design our life so that we live it in the best way possible so we wake up every day full of energy, we feel happy, we feel healthy, and we’re not dragging through the day? That’s how I ended up coming into happiness research was through figuring out and looking into the literature and into the research to see what one thing has the biggest, farthest reaching impact on our health.

When we look into the literature, what’s really cool to see is that when we’re happier, pretty much everything in our life that we want is better, and we’re healthier. It improves tons of different health markers. Not only that, it also acts like a buffer. If we’re feeling anxious or depressed or stressed and at the same time we’re committed to working on our happiness, it can help to mitigate some of the effects, even on a physiological level.

For example, cortisol, which is a stress hormone that can wreak havoc in our body, if we’re feeling stressed or going through stressful situations, maybe a challenging job situation or issues with friends, family, partners, health issues, when we focus on our happiness, it can actually reduce how much cortisol is surging through our body and also the effects of the cortisol within our body. I think it’s really neat to see that focusing on one thing, not only do we feel better mentally, but also physically by focusing on our happiness.

Warren:

You just opened up Pandora’s box for me because I think about that. Even when you take a multi-vitamin, if you’re stressed out and you have cortisol pumping through your veins, you have cellular inflammation. An inflamed cell doesn’t want nutrients. It doesn’t talk to hormones as well. It really has a negative cascading effect.

What I’m hearing you saying, it is kind of like the kerosene on the fire when it comes to your health because of the far-reaching benefits it has at the cellular level just based on the hormones and inflammation that stress those things. I’ve been wanting to ask you this question. It’s kind of a burning question. I think it was a TED talk that I was watching on Facebook. It was talking about when you allow yourself, when you don’t have a practice of vibrating or being at a happy state, when you don’t have that, it’s much more difficult, it takes more time to go from a place of stress to a place of happiness.

It’s easy to go from happy to stress, but it’s more difficult to get the stress to happiness. They’re saying in the TED talk you really need to pay attention and be careful because when you’re happy, you want to stay there and you don’t want to get reset too low because it’s a long road back up at times. I don’t know if that’s true or not or maybe you understand the research a lot better than me. That’s been one of the things that’s been a burning question.

One, how do you maintain a higher level of happiness so you don’t drop into that pit, if you will, and have to crawl your way back out like many of us do? How can you prevent through labeling your thoughts, ideas from dropping into that pit? That would probably be the best solution of it all.

Gillian:

In terms of when we’re feeling stressed, having it hard to get back, I often think about it like if, for example, you want to get more physically active. It’s really hard if you haven’t been to the gym in a long time to go to the gym. Once you get in the routine, you build that habit. It becomes pretty easy to the point where it becomes automatic after a period of time.

However, if we fall off the boat again and it becomes weeks or months without going to the gym, it’s much more challenging to get back. It’s really about focusing on the pattern and the habit of happiness. The other thing that I think is really important for all of you listening to know is that really looking at happiness, it’s something that we achieve. Happiness is not a destination that we arrive at. It is an ongoing practice every single day.

For example, we put healthy food in our body to continually give us energy, to make us feel good, to make us feel vibrant and alive. Every single day we need to focus on what we’re doing to help build our happiness, to cultivate that. It’s almost like a muscle, just like you go in the gym and you work a muscle to get stronger. Happiness is the same thing. It’s an ongoing practice.

I would never make a super food smoothie in the morning and pack in all the super foods and every single vitamin and nutrient and tons of greens and drink that smoothie and then say I’ve reached nutritional wellness. I’m good. I’m done. No one would ever say that.

The same thing applies to happiness. We don’t just get there. It’s something that we have to really commit to to build as a skill. I think the other thing that really is important to recognize is when I first started getting into the happiness literature, I was really shocked to find out that the goal isn’t even to be happy all of the time. When I read that and I started digging into the literature, and I’ll explain a little in a second why when I read that, it took a lot of the pressure off.

I feel like so often we feel like if we’re not happy, we’re doing something wrong or we look at our life and how we’re feeling and we compare it to other people, and we don’t feel good about ourselves because we don’t seem as happy or don’t feel as happy as all the people on Facebook. What the research tells us is that we want to prioritize happiness, focus on it, and recognize that there’s a whole spectrum of human emotions. There is a time and a place to feel sad, upset, frustrated, anxious. It’s not a matter of getting rid of those emotions. It’s more a matter of how do we feel those emotions when they come up, allow them to feel fully in our body so we’re not bearing anything, we’re not putting Band-Aids on things and ignoring it, and yet we’re also not marinating in it.

When we’re feeling sad, when we’re having those days where we’re feeling a little bit low, taking the pressure off, knowing that that’s okay. It’s okay to have days like that and we don’t want those days to become weeks or months. There’s research, and they often call it the dark side of happiness. What they talk about in this research is that people that narrow mindedly or put their blinders on and completely focus on their happiness are often unhappier than other people. Isn’t that kind of surprising at first when you hear that?

That’s their goal, and they worked for it to be happy. Yet, when you look at those people, what’s happening is they’re prioritizing their happiness over everything else. All the other areas of their life, they’re not focusing on that as much. Happiness is part of the collective human experience of your day-to-day and absolutely focusing on everything is one of the things you can do to feel happy and recognizing that there’s a lot more to life than that. It’s really about that holistic picture of your entire day that can really give you the bigger [09:41].

Warren:

We’re going to take a quick break, and we’ll come back with Gillian on the topic of happiness and health and how you can create the best version of you. Welcome back, health hunters. Here with Gillian, my favorite happiness expert in the world. This is such an interesting topic.

We’re moving into happiness, and where we left off, Gillian, you were talking about – I was intently listening. I didn’t say much because I’m just really trying to concentrate on the things that you’re saying. I’m an analytical. You see how I operate, right? It’s more technical based.

I’m not running around. Like you said, it’s okay to be me. This is why I’m delving into this concept. If I’m having an emotion or a feeling, that is me, but I might not express it like you with your beautiful smile and your more gregarious personality that’s just more electric. We’ve talked about that.

You photograph well. You do all these things, but that’s partly you. That doesn’t mean Gillian’s any less or more happy than me. We just have different balances and gifts and personalities within our life. That’s one of the things that you were kind of talking about, this comparison.

When someone looks at your life from their model of the world, she’s truly happy. Yet, you experienced different emotions. You just express it differently. Of course, you focus on and create those habits of happiness that deliver all those areas of health and healing.

What I was looking at is happiness is just a word. You said it’s a category of your life. I know there’s some other words to explain happiness. It’s the word that works best in some sense to connect with our listeners, to connect with the world. Truly, what is happiness?

Let’s dig a little deeper into what that word really means, not just as a word that we flippantly use in our English language. What does it really mean to be happy? I didn’t pre-frame the end of this. In the last segment we’re going to go over things that we can do to elevate and create those happiness habits that motivate and help our life. I threw a lot at you there, Gillian. Help us out.

Gillian:

This is great. Talking about this makes me happy. What’s really interesting and one of the things I love so much about happiness is that you, myself, and everyone that’s listening right now probably has a slightly different definition or understanding of what happiness means. We all can have this collective conversation with no problem.

What’s beautiful is that happiness really transcends gender, culture, race, language. We have this feeling that we know what happiness is. The challenge becomes how do we put words to that? Part of the difficulty in terms of defining happiness is that oftentimes the English language falls short when we try to put into words an emotion. It’s the same thing as how do you describe what love is? It’s a feeling.

That makes things very complicated for me as someone that researches happiness. If I’m researching something, I have to be very clear in terms of what it is that I’m studying. In the academic world, we define our terms. We call them operational definitions, so it’s at the end of the study when I’m writing my paper, I define exactly what it is that I was looking at in the study.

In terms of happiness, the definition that I often work with is one that a colleague out at Berkeley uses. She talks about how happiness has two components. There’s the part of our happiness, which is how we feel, that consistent true line. For example, we meet some people that naturally feel happier than others. We kind of have this general set point.

There’s also the day-to-day fluctuations in our feelings and in our emotions. We might wake up in the morning, have a great breakfast, have a nice cup of coffee, maybe read a book, do some meditation, whatever it is, and we feel pretty good. Then we jump in our car, drive to work, and get caught in traffic. Then we’re late, and then we’re stressed, so we’re not as happy. There really is that fluctuation day-to-day as well.

Whether you call it happiness, sometimes in research it’s called subjective well being, positivity, contentment, joy, all of these different describe the same thing. I think more than focusing on what happiness is, what’s really cool is to know that for each and every one of us, no matter where we are right now, we can build on our own happiness, however we want to call it for ourselves. If we look in terms of the research, about 50% of our happiness is genetically determined. That’s what our parents have given us. Only about 10% of our happiness is accounted for by our environment, so where we work, our kids, our family, all of that only affects about 10% of our happiness.

The reason for that is often when I hear that, it’s a head scratcher because you think if my kids are misbehaving, I’m in a fight with my partner, whatever it is, we think it really affects our happiness. However,  we show up day to day in our life. Things that we see every single day our body adapts and gets used to. It doesn’t really have a significant of an affect as we might think.

Warren:

One thing right there before you move on. This is something that always boggles me. You go to Africa and they’re under bombings or martial law. If we got into that environment, we would be freaked out, sick to the point where just the environment would put us into a deep set of depression.

They have bombs going off around them and when I look at them from the outside looking in, they’re happy, if not happier, than some Americans or Canadians like you. Canadians are always happy. Let’s just put it out there, sweeter and nicer and all that.

Let’s just put that out there and put that in the research and on the show. That makes sense to me because their body adapts to that, so the environment’s 10%. Maybe their culture through traditions, through many of the things they do, they have some habits that create happiness. Maybe culturally or genetically they’re just happier people. It’s always surprising to me. Is that what I’m seeing there?

Gillian:

Yes, absolutely. I was in Costa Rica a little while ago. I think they’re so happy there. They’re all pura vida and having the best time ever every day. It’s part of their culture and what their culture values.

When we look at North America, oftentimes in terms of happiness, what we value is having a nice car, having a beautiful home, having a great job, having these perfect, well-behaved children. Our culture sets us up potentially for looking at happiness from a lens that doesn’t bring us that true, deep, lasting happiness. It’s a more superficial idea in terms of happiness.

I want to back up for one second. There’s a psychological concept called hedonic adaptation. The reason that a lot of the time our day-to-day life doesn’t affect our happiness as much is because of this. I often give the example, have you ever lived next to a train track before?

Warren:

I had this one time I visited a friend – this is a funny story. I visited him. We’re going to go hunting. Whether you are a vegan or not, I did this when I was a kid in the middle of the night. The train was right next to the house.

I got shaken right out of my bed, literally almost fell out. I was freaked out. I thought Jesus was coming back. It was the end of the world. They slept right through it, and I was freaked out. Let’s connect back to your study right after these announcements from our sponsors. Thanks so much.

Welcome back, health hunters. We’re on the happiness train. That’s kind of where we left off. You asked me the question have I ever lived near a train? I told you about the train tracks and shaking me out of my bed. They slept. I hope that led me into what your next teaching was going to be for us.

Gillian:

I was talking about how oftentimes people that live next to a train, when you saw your friend, for example, they probably didn’t notice the train going by. They get used to it. I think that’s the exact same reason why we get used to our life every single day because we’re used to it. We don’t notice those things as much day to day.

The coolest part of this entire research study – again, just to recap, about 50% of our happiness is accounted for by our genetics, so what our parents gave us. Ten percent is environment. The remaining 40% is the really exciting part. That’s the part that each and every one of us have full control over. That’s the part of our happiness that no matter where we were born, where we live, we can build our happiness muscle.

When we look to the research, there are a ton of different skills that are highly correlated with happiness. When we commit to that and we focus on it, that’s the piece of our happiness that we can really build. No matter how we’re feeling today, each and every one of us have the capacity to feel happier and to work on that by learning skills, so things like practicing gratitude, for example. Gratitude and happiness are highly correlated. By taking time each day to write down, to think about, to notice things that you’re grateful for, oftentimes when you start to do that, you’ll see a boost in your happiness because they’re so interconnected.

Warren:

That’s crazy. We’re going to get into solutions. You led me right into one that when I’m doing it, I’m in a much better place of happiness, contentment in my life. I have two gratitude journals. One is called The Gratitude Journal. Is that Jason’s book? Do you know what one I’m talking about? Jason [20:07], maybe.

Gillian:

I do. That’s a great book.

Warren:

I don’t know if that’s the exact name of it. If I had it, I would let our listeners know. I can put it in the show notes. I have Ben Greenfield, another friend of mine – I don’t know if you know Ben.

Gillian:

Yes.

Warren:

He has The Christian Gratitude Journal for the Christian side. There’s a little scripture every day too, so you can read that. They both do the same thing. I read a research study about that. If you just mention, and you can do it before bed, in the morning, both times, it really transforms your life.

There’s all this major research just doing that, writing it down can transform your day. Full disclosure here, I’m not the psychology guy or the NLP guy. I’m the science guy. When someone said you just need to be grateful every day, even though I read the Bible and do those things and it says to be happy, it says to be grateful all the time, I’m like I don’t need to do that.

As I became more educated talking to people like you, reading literature, reading books, reading how to propel your life and live at a much higher level and make a bigger impact in the world, doing a gratitude journal was transformative for me. I ate my own foot numerous times as I do throughout my whole life where you look at something, you threw the baby out with the bath water, and you don’t realize you’re throwing out something that cannot only transform your life, but when you transform your life, I’m transforming the life of my children and their legacy, how I treat my wife, how I show up, how I show up on this radio show, just doing those things and concentrating on what makes me happy and what I’m thankful for. I’m thankful for my children, their smiles, and getting specific and visualizing that as I’m writing it and feeling and experiencing that emotion just transforms everything.

I know there’s a lot of science behind that. There’s frequency in your cells and hormone shifts. You can laugh yourself to health. You can beat cancer and all these other things this way.

Tell us more about how we can start doing these things and more importantly, how they affect even disease outcomes that people are facing. There’s a lot of research in this area. I’m not an expert. I’m just starting my gratitude journals in the last few years.

Gillian:

Do you want to hear a really cool study?

Warren:

Yes, I do. Yes, we do.

Gillian:

There were some researchers that looked at people that won the lottery and people that started to practice gratitude. Not surprisingly, the people that won the lottery, we see a huge spike in their happiness as soon as they win the lottery because you win this money. It’s exciting, and you feel happy. They followed them for a six-month period and over time, their happiness slowly declined because of what we were talking about before, hedonic adaptation where we get used to it.

The day that you win that million dollars, you’re super excited, super happy. The second day, the third day, probably. Then over time, you’re not nearly as excited about it as you were when you first won it. That was one group.

The second group, they were taught how to practice gratitude. What they were instructed to do was every single day take two or three minutes and write down three things that they were grateful for. That was all they had to do. The beginning of the study, they weren’t that happy. At the three-month mark, the people that had started to practice gratitude and the lottery winners had the same happiness levels.

Then at the six-month period, the people that practiced gratitude were statistically significantly happier than the lottery winners. I find this so cool and so exciting because there’s so many things in our life that we can control and a ton that we can’t. Unfortunately, we can’t all control if we’re going to win the lottery or not. However, we can all commit to taking two or three minutes every single day to focus on our gratitude. Knowing that, we can be assured that we’re going to be happier than if we were to win the money anyway. Isn’t that cool?

Warren:

It takes a lot of the pressure off. In our culture we’re always looking for the bigger house, the next paycheck, the more freedom in our workplace. What we tend to do is not take self-responsibility as humans, and this is all humans, unless you put systems and structure around you and accountability. We tend to not be responsible. We tend to blame.

The reason I’m not happy in this relationship is because of the other person. The reason I’m not happy is because I need a higher-paying job. The reason I’m not happy is because I have a one-bedroom home versus a five-bedroom home. I’ve lived in 1-bedroom, 700-square-foot apartments with my wife to 2-bedroom homes to 6-bedroom homes. Literally, the happiness can actually decrease because of the stress of maintaining those homes.

It actually takes away. It’s a big lie. If you think back in your life, some of the most challenging fun times in the journey were way happier times because you’re in a really good spot. I love that it takes off the pressure. I love that we can all experience high levels of happiness, and the research backs us up.

We’ve got to stop focusing on making more money. Focus on the job and focus on our happiness and gratitude and being thankful for what we have and our life and what’s going on. Honestly, I don’t know if there’s research out there about this, but I think that would change your attraction and impact in the world. How we get paid is how we add value.

When you start practicing these things, you want a better job, you want a better home as a consequence of how much more value you’re adding to the world, not because you deserve it to make you happy. You do it because you’re adding more value. This is another way you can earn more, I think, looking at the business level and have a better life overall. As you focus on your happiness, you will attract more, do more, be more, and show up better for everything and everyone around you. The universe will provide you so much more, I think, as far as monetary and social success and all those areas where it may be lacking that would steamroll into a more beautiful life.

Gillian:

I completely agree with you. What’s so amazing, especially when we look at happiness, is how far reaching those benefits go into our life. Just like you said, how we show up for other people, even our health, everything that we do when we’re happier, we tend to make better health choices as well. By focusing on just this one thing, the amount of impact, the ripple effect that it has in our life is huge.

Not only that, there was research that came out of Harvard that shows that our happiness extends three degrees from us. They had [27:04] on the street today, and I was having a really good day. I was feeling really happy. You are going to feel happier because of our interaction. Because I was happier, you become happier.

Warren:

Let’s pick up on that right after these announcements, and then this is going to be our last segment. Then we’ll do some more habits on how we can become happier. Thanks so much, Gillian. We’ll be right back.

Welcome back, health hunters. This is so funny that you brought this up. I want you to explain more about the three degrees of happiness. I just want to intro back in this story.

The other day I didn’t even know the impact that I was having. I want to be the best dad possible. I want to do the right things for my children, and I’m always thinking about how can I make them better? How can I show them that it’s not about pursuing the “American dream” that’s going to elevate their life and have the impact that they’ll need to have? It’s about creating around this topic.

Here’s what I said to her yesterday in the car ride in. “Can you do me a favor?” I took her to school because I was away. I was at the same event you were where I left very happy because of people like you and all the great relationships that we had. It was a mastermind of sorts.

I took my daughter to school. My wife typically does that, but I wanted to invest in my children because I was trying to be the good dad, doing my best. One thing I said to her and now it’s coming back to me, I said, “Today, can you do me a favor?” My daughter is not shy at all. She’s a very happy girl just naturally.

Her hormones, the first 50% puts her in a very high category. She’s always smiling, always loving. She just has that, and I don’t want to squelch that. I’m not that, so I’m trying to find ways to see that gift and grow it even though I’m not that way. When I don’t act and respond like I should and I squelch that happiness, nothing hurts me more. I forgive myself. I move on mainly because of Dr. [Chiffony’s] work and some of the things that I’ve studied and people that we know collectively.

I told her, “Don’t go and talk to your best friend today at school. Who’s the kid, guy or girl, who is the most shy? Who’s the most shy person?” She named a name.

I said, “Why don’t you go up to him today and tell him that you love his shoes, something I think a little boy would like. Those are really nice shoes or really cool. That’s a really cool shirt or whatever it may be, and see how he reacts. Let me know how that makes you feel.”

In the end, I asked her when I picked her up from school, and she did. The reason I taught her that is because when you start to realize that if you can make him happy and how that makes you feel is a far greater benefit and feeling than someone doing something nice for you. I’m trying to show that level of service and gratitude. Go into the science here and see how far reaching that can be and how important that is to raise our children that way because I want to know about that, and I’m sure a lot of the health hunters, the moms on this radio show would love to hear that.

Gillian:

I love that you did that. That’s such an amazing practice, especially with kids, really modeling and teaching that behavior from a young age is going to empower them as they grow up to really do that. When your daughter came home, she was feeling good, right?

Warren:

She’s always feeling good because she’s always trying to add value, and we teach her that. We teach her to be happy and try to love on people. We try to set that up. Who are you going to bless today? We get her to try to do that, and then we get that feedback.

She loves it, and she tries to do it. Maybe it takes three or four times, and then she says I talked to him today or she has done this. I let her know that I really liked her ponytail today and how that made [Shivani] feel. She said Shivani just giggled and was so happy.

I see that in business too. If I want my team to do more from a psychological level, it’s not to blame them or get mad at them when they make a mistake so that they can learn, but it’s to praise them when they do something right. It’s amazing the physiological change that happens with them, Gillian. We’ll be on a Zoom call or some sort of video chat, and you can see that awkward little child in them trying to hold back a smile because you just gave them a complement.

I’m like that’s what it’s all about. That’s motivating out of positivity and love versus the old model of leadership, which is the dictator. That’s some skills I’m trying to learn both in my home life and in the workplace.

Gillian:

It makes sense because when we look in terms of the research, the number one predictor of long-term health and happiness – and this is from longitudinal data from Harvard. This is really robust research.

Warren:

It’s the real deal.

Gillian:

The number one predictor of long-term health and happiness is social connection. It’s really feeling that connection towards people. Above anything else, above what we’re eating, how we’re acting, all of that, having those people in our life where we can go to them for support, they can come to us, that connection you feel with other people, if you’re going to look at focusing on one area of your life if you’re listening today and thinking what can I do to help boost my happiness today or the happiness of those around us, it’s really focusing on those relationships.

It’s picking up the phone and making a call to someone you haven’t talked to in awhile. It’s sending a message. It’s doing like what your daughter did, saying something nice to someone. Doing that has such a significant impact on our happiness and such a profound impact on our happiness. Not only that, but also on our health because doing those things changes the physiology of our body.

They’re looking at serotonin, oxytocin, and all of these hormones that when we do those things and we’re feeling connected to other people, they get released in our body. It’s so cool to know that something as seemingly simple as that is going to have a really big, profound impact on our happiness. Every single day there is someone we can reach out to, someone we can say something nice to and do those nice things for other people because that’s going to boost our happiness and also their happiness too. It feels great to get a compliment like that little boy at school. I’m sure when he got that compliment, it made him feel really good too. Not only your daughter, but also him.

Warren:

It’ll translate into how he acts with his parents. He’ll go home and he’ll be happy. He might not be able to communicate that at six years old. They’re like he’s in a really good mood today. One of the things you triggered in my mind because many of us will get on the phone and do the opposite, we’ll call up and look for someone to complain to, which throws us deeper into the negative hormone cortisol spin.

The opposite of that would be I’m not having a great day. I’m not going to call someone up and complain. I’m going to call someone up and ask them how they’re doing and pointing them back into the direction of positivity and love and just talk about positive, amazing things so that they leave the conversation feeling elevated and inspired versus calling up and yanking you both down by complaining about your lives, which is all a matter of perspective. You probably have the answer to this.

It’s another tool that they can walk away with. What if you have a bad experience, something that happens in your day, whether it’s a disappointment from a partner, a loved one, spouse, your child, and they do something that in the past would cause you to decrease your happiness? How can you label that or reframe a challenge, bad words that were said about you? How can you re-label that to maintain happiness in that moment instead of letting it drag you down and pushing you in the other direction, away from that set point that we talked about earlier?

Gillian:

That’s a great question. When you’re noticing those things, I think the best thing to do is notice it and then to give. When you’re in that state when you’re helping someone else, it’s going to boost your mood. Even if you don’t feel like it, going out and doing something nice, even as small as carrying someone’s groceries out from the grocery store or doing that when we’re in a bad mood, when you start giving, check back in with your mood. I guarantee that you’re going to feel better after that.

Warren:

Here’s another thing that I’ve tried in the past. You’re in a conversation, and this is a technique that I used one time someone just laying into me. Instead of fighting back, I just said, “You know what? I am so sorry I made you feel that way. If there’s anything I can do to,” and then all of a sudden they shock you and start apologizing.

Not to say that I’m the best at that, but I’ve done that a few times to some people on a plane once. I’ve done the opposite on the plane before too where I fell short of the glory, if you will. I fell short of my training and trying to develop these habits. When you’re in those situations where someone’s doing that or if they are coming at you hard, sometimes it’s good just to walk away so that you protect your happiness. Those are real ugly things that we all have to deal with on a day-to-day basis.

Gillian:

Like you said, when you notice those things around you, we don’t have to take that on if we don’t want to. When you notice those feelings, whether it’s when you’re watching a show or something like that where you don’t feel good, change the channel. Move your location. Change your physiology. Change your body chemistry by just getting out of the situation and going somewhere where you feel better.

Warren:

I love it. The show’s going to wrap up here in about 30 second. I like to call this your power place or your secret place. I think Markvision has that or I can’t think of his name right now, but he has a book. He talks about that.

I called it my Masada, which is a fortress. When the world’s coming around you, where can you go hide, if you will, to maintain and protect yourself, because that’s your fortress. Where do you go? For some people it’s working out. For me it’s my children, my family.

If I’m just not performing well in my day, I’m not happy, I’ll just go take 10, 15 minutes and try to focus on my child, play with them, enjoy that fun, that play. Playing is another thing that really helps us. That’s my Masada. What is their Masada? We’ll have to have you back on.

Thank you so much, Gillian. I know you have to jump on another radio show. You are a blessing to me and to so many others. Keep up the great work. Thank you, health hunters, for spending time with us and Gillian today. Have a great rest of your week.

Gillian:

Thank you so much.