Janice Kaplan
Appearances
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Of course, and there are many ways that we actually can distract ourselves from pain. There's research that shows that playing music makes you feel better. By touching somebody else, a physical response that way can distract you from pain. So there are lots of different ways to talk about pain and to think about it.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
There are huge differences also between chronic pain and between an immediate pain. If you break your leg, that's an immediate pain that needs to be taken care of. So many people suffer from chronic pain, from back pain. from knee pain that just goes on and on for months with no obvious cause.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
And it's starting to seem that a lot of that pain can actually be relieved rather than at the site of where it's occurring, but in our brains. You can think of the pain circuit as being like those old electric circuits that you used to set up as a kid, you know, where you'd connect everything and try to make the light bulb go off.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
And any place where you disconnected the circuit would make the light bulb, you were trying to make the light bulb go on, excuse me. Any place you disconnected the circuit would make the light bulb go off. And it's the same thing with the pain. Any place in that pain circuit, which of course runs through the brain where we can disrupt the circuit, we might be able to stop the pain.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
And more and more of the pain researchers who I spoke to, in fact, all of the researchers, pain researchers I spoke to, are focusing on the brain as the place to stop chronic pain rather than the specific site of where you think the pain is occurring.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
I loved learning about food and what makes us think something tastes good. Have you ever gone on a vacation and had maybe a glass of wine while you're sitting in Paris or sitting in the south of France and you go, this is the most amazing wine I've ever tasted. And then you come home and you go to your local store and you manage to find the same wine.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
You bring it home and it just doesn't taste the same. And is it true that wine tastes better in Paris? Well, absolutely. And that's because when you're in Paris, you're not just drinking the wine. You're drinking in the atmosphere. You're drinking in the most romantic city in the world. You're drinking in the sense of being in this charming little cafe. We actually taste with all of our senses.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
There's been some really interesting research showing that you can influence how people feel about a food or what they're drinking by changing the environment where they are. one researcher gave people glasses of whiskey and he sent them to three different rooms that he had set up with dramatically different environments. And he had them describe the whiskey in each room.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
And the one of the rooms, for example, that was set up to be very bucolic with green lighting and with beautiful things that gave a sense of the outdoors, People described the whiskey as having sort of a grassy taste, and then they would go to the next room that was set up very differently with jazz music, and they might describe the whiskey as being a bit edgier.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
And he laughed to say that the people were holding the same glass of whiskey in their hands as they moved from room to room. So at the end of it, they realized nobody had been tricking them. They had been tricking themselves. We take in everything in our environment and we attribute it to the food that seems to be on the plate in front of us.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Back when I wrote the Gratitude Diaries, I knew that if I was unhappy about something or if I could catch myself in a moment when I was just being incredibly grumpy, I would actually stop and literally make myself stop and try to reframe the situation and try to think about something positive and try to think about how could I look at this in a more positive way.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
And that's pretty wonderful because it gives you a sense of control and a sense that you don't have to just rely on the events that are occurring around you. You can change how you perceive them. Now that I've written this book, What Your Body Knows About Happiness, I'm able to use my body in a similar way.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
So if I'm unhappy, sometimes I might stop and make myself stand a little straighter as I'm walking or give a little smile or look up. Or if I'm sitting in my house or apartment and aren't happy, I'll step outside.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
So being aware that there are things that you can physically do to change how you feel, to perk up your brain, as we said before, to go someplace new, really gives you that sense that you're in control, you don't have to be reliant on what's happening around you.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
absolutely go out for a walk take a bike ride there's actually a lot of fascinating research that shows how much more creative we are when we're walking we tend to you know sit slouched over our computers all day trying to come up with good ideas and clever things and solve problems and if you actually get up and walk you're going to become much more creative.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
There's a professor out of Stanford who did some research on this and she called her paper, give your ideas some legs. And the idea is that somehow the fluidity of body movement helps the fluidity of thinking.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
And again, as you just suggested, I think when you're stuck on something or when you're feeling down, one of the things that happens is that you start digging yourself a deeper and deeper hole, and you don't see a way that you can get out. And if you have these little tricks, these little things that you know, this is gonna make a change for me, you can start to move forward again.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Yeah, we like to think of ourselves as being incredibly complicated, don't we? And we are our brains can do a lot of great things. And our bodies can do a lot of great things. But these very simple messages that are being sent between body and brain are pretty simple. And, you know, you can think of it that our brains basic role in life is to keep your body alive.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
You can't solve huge mathematical problems unless you're here. So your brain is just very busy trying to figure out what your body needs and send out those right messages to it. And you're going to feel better.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
there's something interesting on that also which is that so many people have gotten caught up with their apple watches and their various ways of of measuring things uh that they're doing people are out there with their we must do ten thousand steps which i think by now we all know is really there's no scientific basis for ten thousand steps at all and
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
A lot of the research now suggests that if you're a professional athlete, if you're really serious about the sports that you're doing, maybe you want to be measuring what you're doing.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
But if you're a weekend athlete, if you're going out for a run or a walk or a bike ride to make yourself feel better, to get a little healthier, throw away the measuring devices because what they're doing is that they're giving you a goal to achieve rather than allowing you to enjoy the pleasure of the moment. So there is a great pleasure in taking a walk.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Maybe for some people there's a great pleasure in taking a run or a jog or a bike ride. But if you're very busy looking at how fast you're going and how well you're doing and how many steps have I achieved, you're losing that pleasure. So allow yourself to just indulge in the moment, enjoy the pleasures that you have, and the health benefits are going to come.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Thanks, Mike. It's been really fun and great to talk to you. I appreciate it.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Hi, Mike. Thanks so much. Great to be with you.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
So the idea here is that there are really strong links between our bodies and our minds. And we tend to think of our brain as being the big computer that controls everything. But the truth is that your brain is just this three pound mass sitting up there in a very dark skull. And the only information it gets is from your body, from your environment, from your senses,
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
all sending that information up to your brain. And the more we can understand about how those links are working and the information that we're sending, the more we can control them and the more we can use them to make ourselves feel better and happier and improve our well-being.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Well, I'll give you sort of a funny example here that was some research that was done out of Yale where people were given a warm cup of coffee to hold or else they were given an iced coffee to hold. And they didn't even realize that that was part of the research because then they were brought in and they were asked to describe how they felt about certain people.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
And the researchers found that those who had been given the warm coffee described people as being warmer and kinder than those who had been given the iced coffee. So how does that possibly work? Well, our brains in some ways think in metaphors, and they're getting the information of something warm or something cold, and they're actually misattributing it and assuming that it
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
has to do with the person rather than with the coffee that they've just held. Another researcher who's now at the University of Michigan did something similar where he had people sitting in soft chairs and hard chairs.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
And he found that the people who were sitting in the hard chairs negotiated harder in a question about how much they would pay for a car than the people who were sitting in the soft chairs. I guess you could say soft chair, soft heart.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
I know, I absolutely agree with you. It sounds crazy. And we just don't want to attribute so much to our bodies. But think about it this way. If you touch a classic example, if you touch a hot stove, your hand is going to pull back long before your brain actually registers what has happened. And we want our bodies to be able to be sending that information. If you had to
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
wait for your brain to go, oh my goodness, I have just touched a hot stove, I think I had better remove my hand, you're gonna have a lot of burns. So we understand that our bodies have these instinctive responses. What we don't always realize is that they're happening on every level of our environment, all around us, all the time.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Let me give you one other example of similar research where people were given resumes to evaluate. Now that's a kind of standard psychological experiment. And if I handed you two resumes, you'd probably say, oh, she's checking for unconscious bias and I'm gonna make sure not to get influenced by the person's name or where they live or ethnicity.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
But what you might not think about would be the weight of the clipboard that was holding the resume. And the researchers found that when people were holding the resume on a heavy clipboard, they described the person as being much more serious. I guess somehow the heavy clipboard was sending the information of a heavyweight, while the light clipboard was sending the information of a lightweight.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Well, great question. And I think the answer is that being more aware of the body-mind links allows us to use our bodies in ways that are going to improve our well-being. So something very simple like sit up a little bit straighter when you're feeling down, stand a little bit straighter, Research shows that when you're depressed, you just naturally slouch.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
And so when you're in a slouched position, your brain, which is constantly scanning your body for information, assumes that something's going wrong. And somehow when you stand up straighter, the message is getting sent to your body that you're a little bit happier. So those little tweaks actually work. You're probably familiar with the research that's been done on smiling.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
It goes back a long time where people, the first research was people were given a pencil to hold and some of them were given it in a way that would make them frown and some of them in a way that would make them smile. And those whose faces were put into a smile actually reported feeling happier.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
And this research has been repeated, has been challenged, has been done all over the world in many different ways. But the ultimate result is that yes, indeed, the position that the muscles are in in our face affect how our brains feel.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Well, again, your brain is always getting the information from your neurons and from your senses. And when your muscles are in a particular position, if your muscles are tensed, your body is realizing that you're tense. There's an old story about what would happen when you're walking down the street and you encounter a bear.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
I guess in more modern days, we can update that to you encounter a dark alley. And what happens, of course, is that your heart starts pounding and your hands get sweaty and you're scared. And so the question is, are you scared because your heart is pounding and your hands are sweaty? Or is your heart pounding because you're scared?
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
So most of us would say, well, of course we're scared and that causes the physical symptoms. But it now seems to be that it works the other way around. that once again, just like with that touching the hot stove, our bodies are responding first and our minds are taking that information in and realizing what's going on. So how can you use that for good? How can you turn that around?
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Well, let's imagine you're about to give a speech or you're about to ask your boss for a raise. And sure enough, your hands are sweating and your chest is pounding. Well, if you just try to tell yourself, no, no, no, I'm calm, I have this under control, all is going to be well, it's not going to work because your body is sending a different message.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
It turns out that we're happier in blue spaces near water and in green spaces when we're outside. There's a psychologist out of the UK who found that two hours a week spent near the water actually improves your well-being quite dramatically.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
But you can take the message that your body is sending and reframe that a little bit. When else is your chest pounding and your hands sweaty? When you're excited. So reframe that thought and say, I'm not worried about asking my boss for a raise, I'm excited about it. I'm not worried about giving this toast at the wedding, I'm excited.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
And that little change actually works, and it works because your body is sending the same message that you're trying to tell yourself.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
The colors are nice, but really it's what they stand for, that it turns out that we're happier in blue spaces near water and in green spaces when we're outside. There's been a lot of research into that. And there's a psychologist out of the UK who did very extensive research and found that two hours a week spent near the water actually improves your wellbeing quite dramatically.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
And it doesn't have to be at a roaring ocean. There are lakes and ponds and streams just about everywhere. Lots of cities are reclaiming their waterfronts at great expense, but actually it's such an important thing to do because it really does the calming effect The calmness of the water actually just makes us feel better. The fact that water is constantly changing, that there is a rhythm to it.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
There's something about water. Maybe it's that we, going back to our evolutionary biology, we've wanted to live near water because it was safer and it gave us a place where we could find food and possibilities. So just being near water makes us happier. Being outside in any way, being out in the mountains, being outdoors, improves our well-being.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
So that's another thing that we can recognize that when we're feeling down, when we're not feeling great, just step outside and it's probably going to improve how you feel.