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I'd like to welcome everybody today to this presentation we're going to be
talking with dr. Lindsay Weisner about 10 steps to finding happy this is her
new book which will be released on March 20th of 2020 in accordance with the
United Nations International Day of happiness dr. wasner is a clinical
psychologist in Long Island New York she graduated from Georgetown University in
1999 and was awarded the fellowship in child development at the National
Institute of Health she received her doctorate from CW and went on to pursue
post doctorate training at the American Institute of psychoanalysis dr. Weisner
is currently the host of neurotic nourishment podcast and the co-author of
ten steps to finding happy so welcome dr. Weisner why don't you just tell the
listeners a little bit about you and why you decided to write this particular
book sure and I have wanted to be a fiction writer forever in 2014 I won a
contest in Cosmopolitan magazine for the their first and last fiction you know
awarded fiction writer contest of the year and it was supposed to be done
annually I guess I just broke the mold and no one could beat it but you know
from this I got a an affection agent and then I proceeded to try to establish a
social media presence and through Twitter I actually met another writer
Selene Castro via and not only did she live ten minutes away from my house but
my son and her niece also go to school together so it was a full of
coincidences and we've been writing and workshopping together for about five six
years now and over the two summers ago I had thrown out my back attempting to
surf um yes I know and I'm one hand a 42 year old woman should not first try to
learn to surf especially one who has a history of back
problems but on the other hand spoiler alert
one of the steps to fighting happy is in fact to try new things because it helps
your neurotransmitters fire differently and your synapses get all excited and so
it's good but throwing out your back is not good and I was bed bound and solan
reached out to me and said can you see it can you take a look at my self-help
book and let me know what you think and I realized as I was reading it that
although she didn't realize it everything all of her ten steps were
actually based in science and research and there's there's stuff out there
that's rambling through my brain and I could prove it and a lot of stuff I had
to research of course but I really liked the idea of 10 10 steps that were easy
with concrete actions at the end of the chapter that you could do without you
know without much effort and I but I also picked him up with an idea I said
let's let's get other people talking too so we recruited 24 expert writers in
different fields who discuss either their definition of happiness or how
they got through a difficult time or you know the steps they take to become
happier and and there's anyone from an art teacher who likes doing art projects
with her children and that's a very sweet story to a mother of twin boys who
by the time she was 30 she had gone through two totally unrelated cancer
diagnoses and as a result of it it's led to sort of a renewed appreciation of
life okay so there is a lot of inspiration in the book that helps
people see that happiness is possible regardless of your circumstances if
you've overcome cancer if you've done these things and that kind of leads into
the next question about why happiness is important I mean why don't we just get
rid of depression it's a question well let me ask you a question how do you
define that yes well you know that is I define
happiness is more than the absence of depression because and one of the
analogies that I use is a lot of times clients come into my office and they
bring a proverbial box of stuff and done me wrong and things that are hurting and
we work through that box but we go through and take everything out to
eliminate depression anxiety trauma whatever it is and if we don't fill that
box up with anything then they're looking they're holding an empty box at
the end and we want to have them we want to fill them up and we want to help
people fill themselves up even while they may be working to address some
other things plus it's difficult to be happy and ruminating on something that
makes you miserable at the exact same moment so the more happiness moments we
incorporate the hopefully overall assessment of our day will better it'll
be I agree I think it's a great definition that could only come from a
clinician so I respect especially you know if I if I could rewind time I think
I would have changed the name of the book to ten steps to finding happier
because we are fortunate enough to live in a world where we can expect happiness
or notice the absence of it whereas much like when you're my child turns to me
and says I'm bored you know it's a luxury to be bored it's a luxury to be
happy and it's a luxury to have the time to notice being unhappy I'm happy being
different than like a clinical depression so I think happiness is
important because I think much like much like love and marriage and relationships
I think it's a decision you have to make every day to decide to be happy and in
fact step number one is choose happiness and it's not an easy thing and I don't
know if it's supposed to be you know cavemen weren't going around going how
can I be happy or fighting a fight dinosaurs and I don't know raping and
pillaging and other things you know for survival and now we have Trader Joe's
and you know dry cleaners and so we have more time to think about how we feel and
you know I think that's great but I also think we need to work harder rather than
just thinking about it does that make sense
sure I mean we can the whole phrase ready willing and able we can be ready
to be happy and we can be willing to be happy but we need to actually take that
step and it sounds like the book gives you the ability it gives you the skills
that you need to actually start on your journey toward being happy for the
people who are listening or watching who are experiencing anxiety or depression
or they're overwhelmed or they're stressed and they're like I just can't
even imagine being happy how can this book help them start finding a path
toward happiness it's a really good question and I do try to make a point
throughout the book you know putting all these disclaimers of like this is you
know if you are clinically depressed or if you are feeling suicidal if you're
truly suffering like this book can this book is not the cure this book is how
the average person can get a little happier but also there are things in
this book that even if you are clinically depressed was fairly anxious
will help I don't know if you're familiar with halt the acronym halt
mm-hmm hungry angry lonely and tired exactly and so it started of course with
the you know substance abuse population and a way to help not relapse because
when you felt the urge to user abused you were asked to check those four
things so I used to work a lot with anxious adults and I on a whim I
introduced it I'm not the first one but like I was it wasn't a conscious like oh
I read this I was like well let's see if this work so we started using it in that
way go through hungry angry lonely tired and
sometimes that could be the answer your blood sugar is low you're dehydrated you
know I also have a suicidal patient who reached out to me a few days ago and he
was very agitated i text with my patients because it allows for less
loneliness I think and also you know so he was very agitated he was at work and
things were awful and we went back and forth a bit I established that he was
you know not going to himself then but that he was in a horrible state and so I
told him I would check in on him in fact I did and he was fine and I said what
changed and he said I took a nap okay so it's not a cure it's not it you know
it's not an all-or-none but sometimes we have to go back to the basics and I
think this book offers some reminders of those basics whether it be hungry angry
lonely tired or try new things because the brain was not meant to be stagnant
exactly and you know it's kind of funny how some theories overlap over time and
you know obviously there's a nugget of research that they're based on but even
thinking of Linehan vulnerabilities you know it really goes back or Maslow's
hierarchy yeah you know you're not going to have somebody who's really able to
focus on developing self-esteem if they are hungry and paying homeless and not
sleeping well you know we need to help them get healthy so their body can
function the way it's supposed to to normalize those neurotransmitters and
that HPA axis and everything and it sounds like some of the things that you
suggest in the book are targeted toward regulating HPA axis and helping people
also notice some of the more pleasant things and in one of the classes that I
did Oh golly I guess it's been a couple of
months now there was some research that indicated that we tend to encode five
times more stimuli in negative situations or when we're in a negative
mood state than we do when we're in positive situations so it's sort of a
five to one if something bad happens a lot of times you need to notice five
positive things to kind of balance out for the emotional valence of both of
them which is interesting by the way I think you and I could totally dork out
together for hours oh really there's all this stuff that you know Venn diagram me
stuff but of course there's that five to one ratio you're looking for with five
positives so once again we've got this overflow and uh you know and theories
and I don't know maybe we found the truth when we see it more than once
who knows that could be true but I think I've gotten you a little bit away from
ten steps to finding happy a guide to permanent satisfaction and I like the
word that you use satisfaction there it's not permanent happiness we're not
going to be gleeful every day but it is having satisfaction in our lives and
being able to you know wake up in the morning and hopefully look forward to
the day you know there are some days that it's a little harder than others
but you know we do are able to find something during the day that we can
look forward to I think that's when you have to make a point to you know find
find her happy people or schedule something fun or go out in the Sun get
some endorphins by exercise like you have if it's going to be a tough day
find a way to make it better and make that choice exactly exactly
okay so this book is actually available for pre-sale on Amazon and the link is
in the video notes below and in the if you're listening to it as a podcast it's
also in the podcast notes it will again be officially released on March
20th of 2020 in accordance with the United Nations International Day of
happiness thank you for being with me dr. Weisner thank you so much
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