087: More Positivity with Michelle Gielan

Pete Mockaitis
Michelle, thanks so much for joining us once again on the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Michelle Gielan
Thanks for having me. It’s good to be back.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, this is a first, really. The first repeat guest. And I’m delighted that it’s with you because I just loved our first conversation back in Episode 49. There’s a lot of compelling research and applicable to everyone, so just what I like to see.

Michelle Gielan
Awesome. Thanks.

Pete Mockaitis
And so you’ve got this PBS special coming up, and I was reading through the script, and I was struck by how Shawn’s dad is also a neuroscience professor?

Michelle Gielan
Yeah. The two of us married happiness researchers. Someone might have come across this TED Talk because it’s been wildly popular: “The Happy Secret to Better Work.” And he’s very funny. So yeah, he’s a happiness researcher and he got his interest from it from his father who was, just until recently, a psychology professor and a neuroscientist at Baylor University, just retired. And then it’s really funny because we have a very small company. We have a positive psychology consulting firm. It’s just myself and my husband, his sister, and our former across-the-street neighbor. So we keep it all in the family.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s great. And I’m excited here. So now, you have even more new compelling research insights and discoveries from even just a few months ago. Is this true?

Michelle Gielan
Yes. We have been doing nonstop research studies. So what we were starting to see previous to putting together the PBS show was this idea that you can’t change other people. We’ve heard this from so many people. You can’t change other people. I mean, I was told this growing up, right? And we looked at that, and we said, “Well, if you can’t change other people, then a lot of the research that we’re doing looking at how to foster your own positive mindset ultimately stops at you.”
And so we started looking at the research that shows not only is the thought “You can’t change other people” disempowering. It’s actually scientifically false. We are changing people all the time. We’re influencing them as we move throughout our days, whether we have meaningful conversations with them or we just have brief interactions with them. We’re changing how their brain moves through stress, change, and challenges, and also how they approach the positive parts of their day as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s fascinating. And so, now, within this special, you sort of cover five particular strategies that help others feel happier and more positive and healthier. And in our previous conversation, you already laid the groundwork for “This isn’t just feel-good. There’s tons of fantastic advantages for you and your team and your business.” So check that out. Episode 49, if anyone is curious. So having established the why thoroughly there, could you bring us into some of the how? What are some of those strategies there?

Michelle Gielan
Yeah. Absolutely. So we did this one study that to me was just the best. I was so excited about the results. You know, a lot of times, when we are experiencing a problem, it’s very natural to feel overwhelmed by it, right? And then when we watch another person experiencing a problem, we understand how they can feel overwhelmed. But oftentimes, because we’re removed emotionally from it, we feel fine and we can see that they have a path forward. And it’s just a matter of getting them to see that as well.
So we ran this study. This is the series that we did with Arianna Huffington, where we looked at how when you merely present someone with a problem, versus you discuss not just the problem but the solution, a potential or actual solution that someone can take, that transforms how they approach that problem. Specifically, when you pair a problem and solution together, you increase their creative problem solving abilities by 20%. Not to mention you also improve their mood.
So with that study and a whole host of others in mind that show how quickly we can influence others and help them move beyond a challenge that they’re facing, we suggest that, especially if you’re trying to help someone to go from complaining to action, you can help them by using something called the now step. And a now step is looking for the smallest concrete action that someone can take right now to help solve their problem. It doesn’t have to solve the entire problem. It just has to get their brain off of the problem and moving forward.
So I’ll give you a very concrete example. Let’s say someone you know has come to you and said, “I need a new car, and I don’t have money to buy it.” That’s really simple, right? You just need to get the money. But it’s not so simple when we have to start figuring out how to do it. So if we start suggesting as a friend, “Oh, well, what about applying to a college and getting an advanced degree?” that’s ridiculous because they can’t do any of that right now, and it’s not going to solve their problem right now. So instead, what we’re looking for is the smallest concrete action that they can take right now.
So if they’re at the coffee shop, let’s say you meet there and you’re talking, instead of buying a huge Grande, super-sized, Venti latte or whatever, just encourage them to buy a small cup of coffee and save those few extra bucks. Maybe they have an uncle who has an extra car sitting out at his house, and they could call that uncle and say, “Hey, could I borrow your car for a few months? Because that would help me get around, be able to look for a job to hopefully make some more money to buy my own car.” It’s those small steps that help the brain move from a place where we feel overwhelmed to a place where we feel as if positive change is possible.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh. I like that a lot. Well, now, I’m thinking a little bit about romantic relationships, and men and women, and the stereotype which is often that men like to come on in and offer solutions and action steps and “Oh! Just do this!” and often, women, they just want to be listened to. They want to be heard and get that emotion rapport connection understood. So I guess I’m curious to hear, how do we optimally work the now step strategy and balance that with kind of just good, wholesome empathy for the person who maybe isn’t looking for the solution just yet?

Michelle Gielan
Yes. And that is such an important point you’re bringing up. I think as friends, as romantic partners, as family members, we need to recognize when the person just wants to vent. And that’s okay because we need people to be able to go to, to talk about the challenges that we’re facing. The now step is really good for someone who has vented at least a few times and is starting to be a broken record, right? Or you can sense that while they might feel overwhelmed at the moment, they would take an action step if they just felt like they had a clear path forward.
I think no matter what, though, it’s important to acknowledge what someone is feeling. And as a matter of fact, we came up with a framework to address this. The ABC’s, where you acknowledge, you brainstorm (these are brainstorming potential now steps), and then you get the person to choose. Very quickly, you want to acknowledge how someone is feeling so that they feel heard, because we’ve all had that experience where we’re not even finished with our sentence and someone is railroading ideas at us, and it just doesn’t feel good, versus feeling like we’re heard and then maybe asking that person questions that can get them to think of those potential things that they could do.
If we’re removed from the situation, if we are not emotionally invested at the level they are, we probably can see that actually their boss is not a total jerk, and maybe you want to sit down with your boss and talk to him about such and such issue, or maybe you want to go to a colleague. There are other ideas that you could come up with or help that person come up with just by brainstorming together. But the key is if they’re in that place where they’re going to take positive action, get them to choose and ultimately commit to that one small now step, so that they can try it, get a win, and then their brain can be propelled forward to do something more.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that. And another key there is that you’re offering not just answers but questions, in terms of “What might you be able to do right now or today to make it happen?” as opposed to “Lucky for you, I have all the answers.”

Michelle Gielan
Yeah. I had this brilliant friend, and whenever I had a problem or a challenge, I would come to her and I’d say, “Here’s what I’m feeling. Aah!” and she would say, “Yeah. I totally get it.” And then she would say, “Well, what can you do about it? What about this? What about that? What about this?” She just came up with… It was almost like one of those whiteboards, and you just had a marker to write up any kind of good idea that might come up, and then at the end, you get to circle the one you want. It’s literally that simple, but that’s really the essence of positive leadership, and I think also just flat out being a good friend.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. So we covered a couple of strategies right there. We talked about now steps and then the ABC’s with the acknowledge, brainstorm, and challenge-slash-commit. Double C, I guess. And so, what are some of the other strategies?

Michelle Gielan
Well, a lot of people come to us, my husband and I, after we give talks at companies. We talk about how a positive brain fuels performance. We talk about the research that shows when your brain is in a positive state, how you have higher levels of intelligence, productivity, productive energy, success, if you’re a sales professional. I mean, across the board, investing in a positive mindset is so powerful.
And so, while we talk about it at companies in a sense of how you can use this for work, one of the very first questions we get asked from audience members is, “Well, how can I bring this home?” And in particular, they’re thinking about either a spouse who’s stuck in a negative pattern or a child who doesn’t fully see their potential. Maybe their son is getting C’s when they know, as parents, that son is completely capable of getting B’s and A’s. And the child wants to. They just aren’t really fully having confidence in their own abilities.
And so we looked at how to change ultimately someone’s self-perception. What can you say that’s meaningful and concrete that will help someone believe a different story about themselves? A true story, an accurate story about themselves, so that it propels them to achieve their goals better and faster, and take the steps that they want to. And so we looked at this idea of spotlighting the right.
I have a friend. She’s hysterical. She came to me and she said, “My husband, he doesn’t help around the house. And what’s worse is he leaves his dirty gym bag on the kitchen table that I just wiped off.” And I said, “I’m sorry. I totally empathize with you. That is not fun.” And so she said, “And I really don’t know what to do anymore because I’m feeling as if I’m being a nag about this. And now, this situation feels like it’s not only negatively impacting me just for the circumstances, but also negatively impacting the person that I want to be.”
And so we decided to try an experiment. What she was going to do for one week was, instead of cataloguing all the things that he was doing wrong, she would just put those aside, and for one week, she would just start spotlighting all the things that he was doing right. So she would notice them and then she would tell him. “Hey, thank you so much for ordering pizza tonight. It gave me more time to spend with the kids,” or “Thanks so much for doing the dishes. I really, really appreciate it.” Those small things that he was doing that really did make a difference not only helped him feel more connected to her because she was noticing all the good stuff, but it literally changed how her brain watched and paid attention to all the things that he was doing.
So it was a twofold benefit. But the best part was because she was strengthening his self-perception, his identity that he was a helper (and helpers help), all of a sudden, he fixed the leaky pipe that he hadn’t been interested in fixing for the last two months. And he’s doing all these extra things that he hadn’t done, and it’s just because she strengthened his self-perception that he’s a helper. So whether your child is not doing as well in school, or your husband doesn’t feel as successful as he wants, what are those good things that you can acknowledge about their behavior, those concrete facts that will help them see another story about them or their potential in life?
Pete Mockaitis
That’s so cool. That reminds me a little bit of Robert Cialdini’s work associated with consistency. It’s like we tend to want to be consistent to the image we have of ourselves or the commitments that we’ve made. And so then you’re helping shift the image, and it thus feels that you’re naturally kind of wanting to do things consistent with that image. And that’s so cool. I also want to follow up in this point about connectedness there. Now, have you seen or conducted any research that takes a look at the impact of sharing and empathizing on positive versus negative emotions in the effect of making people feel more closely connected with one another?

Michelle Gielan
Yeah. So it’s really interesting. Some people think that in order to deeply connect with the people around them, they need to play misery poker. “Oh, you think your hand is bad? The stuff going on in your life is bad? Let me tell you about all the worse stuff going on in my life.” And while I think that there is a place to connect on a level of shared experiences or challenges that we’re going through (we don’t want to just completely disregard the negative), there is so much more of a bonding experience that comes oftentimes from either co-experiencing or sharing positive experiences.
We did some work with Cardinal School, which is a school district out in the poorest county in Iowa. This school basically had a shared narrative that is pretty much failure factory. Low socioeconomic area, lots of issues with the community, and then the kids were just not doing well in that school. So they came in, and the administrators and teachers and students all committed to just change the narrative of that school. Specifically, they write a book that my husband called “The Orange Frog.”
It’s a great story about how a frog realizes that he’s not actually fully green. He’s got these orange spots. And they’re not only advantageous; they’re actually contagious as well. The orange spots represent optimism. The more optimistic he is, the better he is at adapting to the environment and connecting more deeply with the frogs around him. And eventually, this orange frog spreads his orangeness to everybody.
And so they became the Orange School. That was their new identity. But really, what it was about was the teachers acknowledged in verbal and written form all the great things that each of the students were doing. So acknowledging their strengths or their successes. The lunch ladies got into it, where they were smiling and giving a dose of positivity when they were seeing the students. Bus drivers sent nice thank you notes home with the kids. And obviously, those made it to the parents’ hands as well. It was just a completely different way of communicating as a community.
And what they found was not only did the school cohesiveness and identity change in a positive direction, but also ACT scores rose on average. Their attendance went up to 95%, which is just incredible. And they got a $5 million grant from a community. Oh, and the best part is parents of kids from other districts (basically, the rich districts) ended up driving their kids to school at this district because they wanted to… They drove them long distances just to have a positive education. I love that. So yeah, I think sharing those positive experiences and having a shared narrative is incredibly important.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s so cool. Declaring it and seeing it happen. And so I guess I also want to hear a little bit, in terms of you and your family of happiness researchers. I’m curious. So now, in your own world, when you’re feeling lame or grouchy or yucky or sad or just generally “blech,” I’d say, there are some schools of thought that would suggest every emotion has meaning and wisdom, and we should sort of mine it for the maximum amount of knowledge that could be gained from every emotion, positive and negative. And other folks who would say, “Let’s kind of fast forward through past the negative and get right to the positive, good stuff.” With all of your wisdom and research, where do you come out on that, and how do you approach feeling just kind of yucky from time to time?

Michelle Gielan
Yeah. So being married to a happiness researcher, I know very clearly when we’re not living the research, because I have a loving person at my home reminding me. Or I know the research so well up here in my head, right? So if I’m seeing that I’m not living it, I guess I feel doubly bad. But the thing is I still feel all the emotions that every normal person does, and I still have my down days.
I think what’s different now is because I put into practice so many of these positive habits, even simple things like saying my gratitude, writing down three new and unique things I’m grateful for, or being really conscious about taking meaningful pictures of my son or of a beautiful sunset and savoring them, those small things change how our brain operates. And because of putting all those into practice, when I do feel down, I’m able to get back more quickly. And so I think that that’s been the major difference for me, having practiced all of this research as much as I have.
So I think going back to the first part of your question, there is a place for negative emotions, absolutely. And we should seek to understand the sources of those. And that’s where psychology as usual is very important. But I also think that dwelling on those feelings sometimes can be a disservice to our emotional happiness. Sometimes, after you’ve had a chance to look at them, moving on and also cultivating positive experiences can be incredibly more powerful for fueling our happiness in anything.
There’s a study that I absolutely love. This was done by researchers working with people who are suffering from a chronic illness. They were basically in chronic pain from a neuromuscular disorder. So researchers decided to ask them to think about the most meaningful moment over the past 24 hours and journal for just two minutes about it. So that’s literally four to five lines, to get them to relive the experience, get their brains back into that moment, so they can, in essence, double the amount of meaning in their life over that day for that particular topic, right? So this is something that anybody listening could try right now. The patients that kept up this practice for six months, two minutes a day, researchers were able to drop their pain medication in half at the end of that period.

Pete Mockaitis
Fantastic.

Michelle Gielan
Yeah. So it shows us that sometimes focusing on the positive can make the negative not as powerful. We have a limited amount of brain resources. Our brain is incredible. It can process 40 to 50 bits of information per second, but we’re bombarded by more than 11 million from all of our nerve endings every single second. So inherently, there are choices. If we just focus on the negative first, then we don’t leave our brain resources left over to focus on the positive. The more we reorient our brain towards the positive, the more that we draw the benefits.
And one last thing I think that’s important is that then the opposite of happiness is actually not unhappiness. Unhappiness can be an incredibly propellant. Tell us that a situation is not going well, or tell us that we need to get out of a relationship. The opposite of happiness is actually apathy. And that’s when we’re dipping down into depression, where we don’t care anymore and we’d just rather stay in bed.
I’ve been there. It is not fun. I know depression is different for everyone. But what I did do in those moments is I worked every day to fact check the stories my brain was telling me. Exercise. And I put into practice all the positive habits that I write about in my book. And now I see that those are not only… They give you the ability to get out of depression or a low mood, but they’re also the building blocks to everyday happiness as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Very cool. Thank you. Well, another thing I want to follow up on from our last conversation, you mentioned a study that having three minutes of exposure to negative news in the morning yielded something like an extra 27% likelihood of reporting a bad day, like at the end of the day, 8, 10, 12 hours later. And so I’d love to hear it. Since you’re a former broadcaster and you probably think news matters, what’s the optimal strategy for keeping the positivity and all the benefits associated with it, yet also kind of having a clue about what’s going on in the world and being informed?

Michelle Gielan
This is literally the number one question I’ve been getting from audiences recently. Yeah, absolutely. Well, because it’s something that is so top of mind, especially right now with what’s going on in the world. People want to know how to navigate this environment. How do you stay focused on what’s happening in the world and up-to-date, but at the same time, you don’t get totally bummed out and feel hopeless and helpless at the end of the experience?
So what I would say is that there absolutely is a way to consume news in a way that can be fueling and keep you up-to-date on what’s happening. First of all, I think the best way to get news in general is online, because what happens is you have the ability to click on a story or not. So it’s just easier, right? So skip all of those headlines that are about things that don’t directly impact you or are just salacious, sensational, or negative. Save yourself the trouble because, ultimately, that’s just noise. That’s not the signal.
The signal are issues that affect your life, causes overseas, including things as serious as the Syrian refugees that you can actually do something about. I have to check on this, but I think this is so beautiful. I heard that Nelson Mandela looks at the newspaper not as something to read and just stay informed on the news, but he looks at it actually as a to-do list. “Do I do something about this particular thing? Do I change my life as a result of this? Do I donate money because of this? Or do I pray for this particular group or individual?” And when you look at it like that, man, everything changes.
The other thing is not to forget our power through this process. If there’s a situation that touches you or you feel passionate about, you can raise awareness on social media. You can donate money. You can pray for the group. You can do a whole host of things. And then if there is a story or information that is positive and emotional, you can spread that to the people around you, and therefore, give those stories extra legs.
There was a brilliant study done by Jonah Berger and Katherine Milkman from the University of Pennsylvania from Wharton, and they looked at the New York Times over the course of three months to see which stories were most likely to be shared. And what they found is that a positive story is significantly more likely to be shared over a negative story. And if that story is positive, emotional (meaning you feel an emotional connection to it), and it includes practical information, that’s a trifecta. That will go further and get more eyes on it than anything else. So it shows us the power that we have as individuals to shape the news that the people around us consume. And so I say, make sure that what’s coming in fuels you. Make sure that what you transmit out can fuel other people. And leave the rest alone.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s very complete. Thank you. And that trifecta there: if it’s positive, it’s emotionally connected, and there’s practical information. It’s funny. I think that that’s kind of what the most viewed TED Talks really seem to have in common.

Michelle Gielan
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Is that they’re hitting all of this. I’m thinking about Amy Cuddy right now with power posing. I think that’s like the number two most watched TED Talk. And there we have it. We’ve got some connectedness to a story, something that you can just go do right then and there, and it’s positive. It’s like, “Ooh. I like the power that this unleashes within me.” So that’s very handy, just from like a knowledge and information marketing perspective as well.

Michelle Gielan
Yeah. Absolutely. And there’s new initiatives. I’m so in support of these. Some of them are led by the Solutions Journalism Network. And there’s one at the Huffington Post called “What’s Working.” They’re trying to create solutions-focused news articles and TV pieces on stories. Like right now, we’re just starting in the process of doing a research project with the Detroit Free Press. They’re looking at violence in the inner city, especially abuse on children.
But most importantly, not just looking at the problem, but actually looking at what we can do about it. So it’s either organizations that have been successful in other communities and have ideas that could be imported to Detroit, or it’s looking at particular individuals within the Detroit community that have been incredibly effective at whatever they’re trying to do to help alleviate the problem.
It’s very solutions-focused. When we get the brain focused on solutions, just like we talked about earlier, it changes us chemically. It changes our results. But also, it changes how we feel about whether or not our behavior matters in the world. Central to optimism and central to positive results is this belief that our behavior matters. If I don’t think our behavior matters, why would I do anything in the first place, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Mm-hm. And that connects to the apathy being the opposite of happiness point. Apathy is like “Oh, whatever.” And that is very much connected to the belief that anything I do has no meaningful consequence.

Michelle Gielan
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, this is so good. So much good stuff. Thank you for sharing. So can you give us the scoop here to this PBS special? What’s it called? How can we watch it? When is it on? And those goods.

Michelle Gielan
Yes. Absolutely. So a couple of goodies. First of all, the show is called “Inspire Happiness.” It will be airing nationwide starting in December, and it will air at different times, depending on the markets over the next two years. So we’re really excited. I hope people will catch it. The other fun thing is that based upon the ideas from that show, Shawn and I have created the Inspire Happiness video workshop. And it is free. We invite anyone to go ahead and take it. You can find it at broadcastinghappiness.com.
What you’ll receive is one video each day for a period of three days. It’s just meant to be quick first. So you wake up, you get this video, you get a positive idea and some research, and then experiment to try out. And then we’re hoping that those who join will share in our community questions so that we can get inspired by each other, because I think that’s really the fun part. So it’s at broadcastinghappiness.com/happiness.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thanks. And so tell me, is there anything else you want to make sure that you put out here before we shift gears? We did the fast faves last time, so I’m going to mix it up a bit.

Michelle Gielan
Oh. Well, I think that’s it. Well, the one thing I would say is that what is exciting ultimately about all this research that we’ve been doing is that it shows such a compelling case of how influential we are. So anytime that any of the listeners could get down and out about the fact that they have someone negative in their life that they’ve been trying to help, what we talked about today, these are new operating instructions. These are new conversation tools that you can use to get you out of that rut and get that other person bumped from a place where they’re stuck and negative, to a place where they feel empowered, resilient, and positive.

Pete Mockaitis
Outstanding. All right. So last time, we talked about a favorite quote, a favorite book, a favorite tool, a favorite quotable gem, etc. And so, since we’ve kind of covered your favorite things, I’d just love to hear as a final thought, is there just anything that’s new and cool that you’ve discovered that you’re finding inspiring or that you’re reading a lot right now, where it’s just good and fun and new for you?

Michelle Gielan
You know, a lot of my time, actually, because I have a two and a half year old, is spent reading short stories, just kids’ books. And I came across this one, which maybe all the parents out there listening are like, “Oh, that’s so old news. We’ve already seen it.” But it’s called “The Pout-Pout Fish.” Have you come across this book at all?

Pete Mockaitis
Not yet.

Michelle Gielan
It’s so cute. It is so cute. But it’s basically this pout-pout fish who has a natural frown on his face, and he’s going through the ocean, and all his friends, one by one, come along and say, “You know, buddy,” in different ways, “You should really turn that frown upside-down.” And he just says, “No.” And he basically wants to dwell in his unhappiness. And then a nice little lady fish comes along and plants a smooch on his pout-pout, and his mouth turns up. And he is just so happy, and he realizes that he wants to go around spreading happiness around the ocean. So I just thought it was so cute, and my son loves it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s fun. And a nice visual. Very cool. Well, Michelle, this has been a real treat. Thanks so much for making the time. Again, I hope that the Inspire Happiness show is a smashing success. And hopefully, there will be a few more viewers as a result of this chat. And keep on doing the great work.

Michelle Gielan
Thank you. You, too. You’re such a natural, positive broadcaster. So thanks so much.