 All right, well it's great to have you with us Dr. Harris and thank you for joining us on the call all the way from Australia, Johnny and I are huge fans of your work and we spoke with a colleague last month, Dr. Stephen Hayes, and now we're excited to delve into happiness and values. These are two topics that we focus a lot on the show and in your book, The Happiness Trap, you talk about happiness myths and how they're so pervasive in our culture. Could you tell our listeners what these myths are and how they came about? Yeah, sure. Well, thanks for inviting me. The books called The Happiness Trap because popular myths about happiness will make you miserable if you base your life on them. And I suppose the most common of these kind of happiness myths is the idea that happiness is feeling good. You ask most people what's happiness, they'll say it's a good feeling or you know the Macquarie Dictionary which is Australia's kind of number one dictionary defines happiness as a state of pleasure or contentment. But if that's your idea of happiness, then there's no such thing as lasting happiness because like how long can a happy feeling or a good feeling last for? I mean, let me ask you guys, the happiest day of your life, you know, how long were you feeling happy for before there was some frustration, anxiety or disappointment, right? Well, living here in LA, it's typically when you get in your car and drive away. Exactly. So if your idea is that happiness is feeling good, you're going to be constantly battling with the reality that good feelings don't last very long. And you know, a link to that myth is the idea that the natural state for human beings should be one of happiness. There's this idea out there, if you give people food and water and shelter and employment and a good social structure, they're just naturally going to feel happy. And I say to my clients all the time that, you know, emotions are like the weather. You expect them to change continually. It would be weird if all day, every day was a kind of warm spring, sunny day, right? You expect to feel fear and sadness and anger and disappointment as you go through your life. If you're going to live a full human life, you're going to feel the full range of human emotions, not just the ones that feel good. So if you subscribe to this myth that the natural state for humans is happiness, again, it sets you up for a struggle with reality. And then building on top of those two myths is a third myth, this idea that, you know, if you're not happy, you're defective, there's something wrong with you. You should think positive, feel good, be happy, don't worry. And if that's not the case, there's something wrong with you. More and more, you know, my 12-year-old son came home from school about a year ago when he was 12, and he said, I'm depressed, Dad. And I was like, what do you mean, what do you mean, you're depressed, you know? And what happened was, I don't know if you guys had the craze for fidget spinners over there. We were kind of, you know, they were huge here. And he'd been playing with his fidget spinner against the teacher's instructions and she'd taken it off him and she wouldn't give it back to him. And so he came home and said, I'm depressed because she wouldn't give me back my fidget spinner. This is what's going on. It's like these pathological terms, such as depression, are creeping into everyday usage and replacing normal language, such as feeling a bit down or a bit sad. So, you know, if you're not happy, there's something wrong. And then on top of all of those three myths, they lead right to the kind of biggest happiness trap of all, which is, if in order for me to have happiness, I need to avoid and escape the unpleasant, difficult thoughts and feelings and replace them with the ones that feel good. You know, this kind of, we're in a feel good society. And for the first time in human history, happiness is now being defined as feeling good. Whereas for most of human history, it's been defined as doing good, you know, living your values, doing the stuff that's meaningful in life. And so all of this sets people up just to struggle with the reality that life is painful and difficult and doesn't teach people how to deal effectively with the painful emotions that are a part of living a rich and meaningful life. I can certainly see the language changing around that. I think a lot of us in the West, especially with social media, tend to be overly dramatic about everything. So, of course, who's going to pay attention to us if we're not going over the top with some of these descriptions about how we feel. And it only goes to get the one thing that you've talked about in your book of getting that attention and the things that we do to get that for ourselves so that then we're able to feel good. And another thing, you know, I think we're moving into a place now because self-development is there's so much of it online, people can look at it easily without being stigmatized that we're broken just for trying to look for better ways of living. Yeah, well, exactly. And then there's the flip side where you kind of get pushed into it. If you're having a down day, you know, or there's something wrong with you, go to your doctor, go and take some antidepressants, you know, it's kind of getting it from both both angles. Yeah. And I think what we've found in doing this over the last 10 years is just people are refusing to talk about the negative feelings in a healthy way. So as we're losing and feeling more disconnected, we're losing community. When we have these negative thoughts and feelings, we're struggling to deal with them ourselves. We internalize them. We hold on to them. They become our being and we don't have the sense of community that allows us to feel better and realize that, no, you're not broken. You don't have to be happy all the time. It's OK to be sad. It's OK to feel some of these other negative emotions that have been stigmatized. Yeah. Well, you know, I'm so glad you said that because again, there's this idea out there that you should surround yourself with happy, positive people because negative emotions are contagious and don't surround yourselves with people who are not happy and positive or you'll catch their negativity. I mean, I'm guessing it's the same for you guys over there. That's that's a popular idea out here. People blog about it, you know, it's like we've heard it in our guests that negativity is contagious and you don't want to surround yourself with negative people. And to a degree, it makes sense to want to be happy all the time and want to feel that you have positive people supporting you. But unfortunately, those same people can steer you in the wrong direction with their positivity. Yeah. Yeah. Look, absolutely. I mean, want to get away from from labelling people as positive or negative. Let's just say there's human beings and we have a whole range of positive and negative emotions. You know, it's not like you're a positive or negative person. You're a person that has a human experience and, you know, if you're going to build loving intimate caring relationships with other humans, you've got to make room for the painful emotions that are going to come. I mean, part of an intimate connection with someone else, you know, an emotionally intimate connection is being able to be real about your feelings and trusting the other person to respond with empathy and compassion when you're hurting and in pain and struggling. So now that we've depressed our listeners, how do we act on this knowledge that we've dispelled these myths? What can we do to live a happy life, so to speak? So I think the number one thing is to redefine happiness. You know, if if I were to define happiness, it's a word I stay away from because it's such a loaded term. But if I was forced to define happiness right now on this show, I would define it as living a rich and meaningful life in which we feel the full range of human emotions without a struggle. And so let's break that down. Let's live a rich and meaningful life. Let's kind of get in touch with our core values, what we want to stand for in life, what we want to be about as human beings and use those as a compass to kind of guide us through life, get back to the idea of happiness is doing good rather than feeling good, do the stuff that's meaningful and life enhancing. And let's learn how to engage and focus and put our full attention into what we're doing so that we can appreciate it. And let's learn how to feel the full range of human emotions. Most of us are OK feeling the pleasant emotions, but let's learn how to feel the painful emotions without a struggle, how to let them flow through us, how to let them kind of come and go without getting caught up in them. Step out of the fight with them. Sounds a lot like living in the present, right? When you talk about some of the stuff hanging onto the negative emotions in the past and then focusing on what the future could be with those negative emotions, it sounds like being more mindful and present is a good start. Yeah, like mindfulness is absolutely, you know, at the core of it's funny when I first wrote the Happiness Trap, I didn't even mention the word mindfulness until about a third of the way through the book because back then 10 years ago, not a lot of people knew what the word meant. In the last 10 years, the words got out there and now everyone knows it and now the words getting mixed up with all sorts of unhelpful connotations like people are often now equating mindfulness with relaxation and mindfulness with feeling good, you know, whereas you kind of nail that the core of mindfulness is being present and being present with whatever emotions you're feeling, the full range of emotions that go with the full life you're living in this moment, you know, so yeah, being present, living mindfully, but not just mindfulness. I often say, you know, kind of mindfulness without values is like a ship without a rudder, you know, what's your direction? Where are you going? So mindfulness and values together. Well, it has certainly become a buzzword and living in Los Angeles, I think we see it in everything. And in fact, it's such a buzzword, people will advertise using that word to describe coffee, you know, you're having your morning mindful coffee, and come to our coffee shop so you can be happy mindfulness and sit it's like it's it's everywhere it seems. Did you did you guys get the mindful coloring book craze over there? Yes, we did. Oh, man, it's very few people who know what mindful coloring is. It's well, unfortunately, kind of this idea of, okay, I just have to be mindful has that connotation of, okay, well, then discount everything, unplug, relax yourself. But that's not exactly what we're talking about here, because it really is the processing of both the positive and negative emotions in a healthy way. That's the crux of the problem. If you're not doing that, it's going to lead to devastating effects personally and in the people around you. And something to go along with that is, I think it usually has an attachment to yoga or met, well, more so meditation, right? This is your mindfulness practice. And in fact, you know, in doing a little research about this and prepping myself for the show that I had saw a YouTube video, an animated one today, that you had narrated talking about that very thing. Yeah, I mean, there's so many different ways of meditating. So mindfulness meditation is a tiny subset of all the different types of meditation out there. And there are so many ways of learning mindfulness skills without ever meditating, which is great. You know, we don't have to meditate to do this stuff. Like in Australia, the the big sport, the kind of top sport of the country is AFL Australian Football League. I don't know if you've, yeah. And you know, so there's kind of now two AFL teams where the entire team is being trained in mindfulness, but you don't get Australian football players doing mindfulness meditation, you know, but they can kind of lift weights mindfully and do their kind of warm up routines mindfully and they can play the game mindfully. And when you run out onto the pitch in front of 80,000 spectators, not knowing if your contract is going to be renewed, then it's normal to have high levels of anxiety, but you can still play the game mindfully even when you're feeling anxious. And so this is one of the key myths you kind of touched on this idea of mindfulness about feeling good and being relaxed. But if you if you're walking through the backwoods of Alaska and you encounter a black bear, you know, you can respond mindfully. You won't relax. There's no relaxation technique. But you know, you can mindfully take control of your arms and legs and do what you need to do to survive, which apparently, you know, don't quote me on this, but apparently you need to stand very still, stay silent, and then ever so slowly move backwards, you know, because if you scream and run, the bear will chase after you and kill you. So you can be mindful in that situation, even when you're having a full on fight or flight response. But you won't be relaxed or happy, you know. Well, this is something that you had talked about in the happiest trap of, I guess, the beginning steps to to diffusion and just being able to, as a spectator, watch these thoughts come and go with without without that. Well, if we could we could look at it as stoicism. Yeah, not really an expert on stoicism. But I mean, these ideas, ancient, they have been around for thousands of years in Greek philosophy and Buddhist philosophy. And actually in all world religions have these kind of ideas about living in the present moment and accepting pain and living your values. But because there's a big difference between values and virtues and morals. Yes. And something else that I wanted to make sure that we had gotten to of just in our world today, how easy it is to anytime that we feel any sort of negative emotions to bury our attention in some other place to get away from it. And so mindfulness is the it's certainly not preached and we don't think about it. And because of that, we don't see the damage that avoiding looking at these feelings is causing. Yeah, look, absolutely. It's the default setting for most of us is when a painful emotion shows up, you know, let's turn away, distract, run from it, do anything to make it go away. I don't even like using the terms positive and negative emotions because they come, you know, if you if you're going to live a full human life, you want to be able to experience sadness and fear and anger and anxiety. These are useful emotions that you'll struggle. If you had no capacity for fear, you'd be a psychopath. You know, when if you had no capacity for sadness, you're going to miss out on so much that's important in terms of relationships and it's we want to be able to embrace the whole range of human emotions. So even just calling them positive and negative, I have a I try not to do it. Painful for sure. Difficult, challenging. Well, we talked about that in last month's theme of habit building, how when we turn things into a habit, they actually become dull, they become boring and uninteresting. Much like life in general, if every day is happy, then happy has no meaning any longer and you can't actually understand the difference unless you have gone through the opposite of gone through that pain and suffering. Now, one of the core principles you write about, we've touched on a couple times already, we want to delve into this now and as an act therapist, this is really important and that's values and I think again, I know we're dispelling a lot of myths, it's almost like we're the semantics police here, but values gets ban turned around a lot and can be confusing and obviously is tied a lot to religion for most people in their in their youth. So, what do you define as values and how can we actually find these values? Yeah, so, well, you know, there are obviously different definitions of values floating around, so I can't be there saying this is the correct definition, but in the, you've talked about act, which is acceptance and commitment therapy, the kind of model that the happiness trap is based on. In the app model, we define values simply as desired qualities of action, the qualities you want to bring to your actions. So, with my clients, I describe them very often as your heart's deepest desires for how you want to behave as a human being, so how you want to treat yourself, how you want to treat others, how you want to treat the world around you. So, there's no, the big difference between values and virtues is that virtues include a judgment. So, suppose that my values are being loving and kind and caring, the, they would only be virtues if the group that I belong to say, hey, these are good positive values. So, for example, in some Asian cultures, if assertiveness is your value, in quite a number of Asian cultures, assertiveness is not seen as a virtue, so you could belong to a group. Also, you could belong to a group, an organization, or a family, even if you're unlucky enough that espouses certain virtues that don't fit with your values. So, one of the, the rules of fun for values is you can usually say them in one or two words, you know, loving or being loving, kind, or kindness, or being kind. If it requires a whole sentence, you're probably not talking about a value. So, if it's something like, vow, shout, not kill, that's a commandment. It's a rule, it tells you what you can and can't do, you can't say it in one word, but the value that sits underneath that rule is probably something like loving. And I feel that a lot of us get values and goals confused. Goals, the action tied to them, values obviously we can describe in one word. Yeah, well, I think everyone gets values and goals confused. Goals, what we want to get, achieve, have, complete own, you know, you can tick them off the list, whereas values are how I want to behave right here, right now, in this moment and tomorrow and a year from now and a decade from now. So, you know, marriage, if you want to get married, some people do, you know, then marriage is a goal. You know, you can tick it off the list, complete it, tick marriage number one, tick marriage number two, and if you're in LA, tick marriage number three. So, but if, you know, if my value is being loving, I can live that right here right now, even if I never achieve the goal of marriage and I can be loving, even if I never have a boyfriend or girlfriend, I can be loving towards myself or my neighbor or my dog or my cat or my, you know, my plants or my community. So many ways I can live the value of being loving in tiny little ways and big ways and notice I can achieve the goal of marriage, marriage number four, even if I neglect the values of being loving. So, yeah, if you're on marriage number four, you may have missed out on the value of loving there. Unless, of course, you're living the value of novelty, so... We have an online challenge that we talk a lot about on the show and one of these challenges in our private Facebook group is just define your values and Johnny and I always get a kick out of how this, what seems so simple, can trip so many of our challenge participants up. Either they struggle to whittle it down to just a few handful of values or they really stop after one or two. Well, to add to that, I remember when it was, the challenges are now down to five, but it wasn't 10 or it wasn't even more, it was 10 and when the define your values was like the fourth challenge and that's where we had seen the biggest drop-off and what we had seen was that most people will look at the challenge and think, well, this is easy enough and they start putting it together and by the time they get the three and then realize, wait, I only have two spots left and I had those tons of wonderful values that, of course, you would want in your life and by committing to them you're putting this out there and so people will just get fed up and stop right there. However, in completing that you and committing to what those values are, that the next moment after that your life, well, at least for a lot of people and I see it as, well, you now have a choice, are you going to act towards your values or away with your values and the minute you start working towards your values, your day changes, your, how you view your next week changes and how you wake up in the morning changes. So, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that because I, I thought it was just such a wonderful thing to see everyone working through myself. Yeah, look, I totally agree with that. That's a nice way of putting it. The values conversation is new for most people. A lot of people like kind of look at me like, what planet are you from? What do you mean values? And, you know, unfortunately the word's often used by shunky politicians saying views are our values here, you know. So, I think it's very challenging for most people. It takes a lot of time and what is it worth the effort? It gives you that compass, it gives you that guide and once people do identify their values I encourage them to do what I call flavouring and savouring. So, just look for little moments throughout the day where you can just flavour what you're doing with a chosen value. You mentioned when you wake up in the morning, well, you know, when you wake up in the morning pick two or three values that I just want to bring into the day to flavour and savour. So, I'll pick loving and kindness and so, you know, I'll just make interaction with my next door neighbour or the person at work or whatever. Let's just sprinkle a bit of those values in, give it a bit of a flavour and then savour it. What difference does it make when I consciously bring those values into play? You know, what difference? Well, to go along, were you mentioning that people had looked at you as an alien or that you were speaking of something that was just so novel and new or different? I tend to think that when I, so I'm 44 years old, I don't know where you're at in your age, Russ, but... 52, 52. All right, so I, when I think about at least the West and America in the 40s, 50s, and when I think about my parents' generation, I am, certainly my grandparents' generation, I hear, you would, I would hear values a lot. It was, it seemed to be that it was a staple and talked about a lot more in life and now we seem to have lost that and to go along with that, and maybe I'm connecting dots that are not there, but from my experience it seems that we are running rampant with anxiety and depression and a lot of other things that can be taken care of, if people have those values together and they're able to engage in them healthily throughout their day, week, month? Yeah, I think absolutely, you know, I think you're joining dots that are there, you know. I would add a qualifier, though, that very often values, as they were spoken about in generations before us, there was a kind of a rigidity to them, like just sitting underneath those values where rules about this is the right way to live your values and that's the wrong way, you know, and so certainly in the app model we're about helping people be very flexible in the way they live their values. It's not like there's, if you start getting into ideas about this is right and that's wrong and you should do this and you shouldn't do that, then you're starting to kind of move away from your values into the land of rigid rules and shoulds and musts and so forth, you know. So I think, you know, you mentioned anxiety. I mean, it is, it's epidemic, isn't it? And I think values are a way for us to channel our anxiety in constructive ways. It's like, you know, doing this cast with you right now, I'm feeling anxious, you know, you guys are lovely, you know, you kind of, I can see you here on my Skype screen and you're putting me at ease and I've got Elizabeth here kind of holding the microphone at this end and, you know, my hands are a little bit sweaty, my heart's racing, I've got kind of knots in my stomach and I'm willing to have this anxiety to do something that's meaningful and important, you know. I care about these messages, I care about getting them out into the world. This is a meaningful activity that I'm doing with you guys and I'm willing to have the anxiety there to do it and if I'm actually willing to have the anxiety, then I can actually use it, you know, anxiety enhances your performance. This is a kind of a performance, there's a, you know, there's a, like I've done zillions of interviews, but there's always the pressure there, it must be for you guys too, I would think, yeah, kind of. And so we can tap into that anxiety, there's lots of good research showing that you can use it and if your anxieties are too low when you're doing some sort of performance tasks, your performance drops, psychologists call this relaxed incompetence. So I can use my anxiety in a constructive way and I think values, you know, it's not a way to get rid of anxiety, but it's a way to what's my anxiety telling me is important, what's it telling me that matters to me, what's it telling me that I want to do? I've only got so much time on this planet, how can I use it effectively? You know, there was something that, when I was reading The Happiness Trap and I was looking in the values and the more I looked into it, the more something from my youth had kept popping up and being Gen X and graduating, I graduated high school in 1992 and in the early 90s there was this this art movement that came out in music and film that was basically this the slacker movement or the slacker generation and Art Linkletter was the leader of that and there was tons of movies, The Low Life, Floundering that sort of had, they were morose and slow moving and they dealt with these characters who were who being and newly out into the world in the early 20s just felt lost and because they weren't doing anything productive because they were being these slackers the anxiety and dread and the being lost in life kept becoming more and more within their lives and where they would be fighting for any sort of thing that they could they would allow them to feel that they had a place in the world and I couldn't help looking at this going that it's it all it is was right here of writing down these things that are most important to you and just how that was not even on the table at that time and I'm just happy that we're able to well we have certainly with you and Stephen Hayes and and self-development being so I think it's seeing a and I would say a new revival Renaissance of people coming in contact with this so hopefully we can help some of this rampant anxiety and the pressure that's going on I think so I mean I think values are a good kind of antidote towards that it's you know I mean you mentioned the slacker generation I think that sense of being lost is true at every decade of life you see it in 30 years people are some people are starting families other people are wondering if they're going to find a life partner some people are struggling with not being able to have kids at 40 the mid the midlife crisis at 50 they're getting old at 60 the retirement stuff you know it's it's you know it's just so easy to get lost as a human being and I like that that analogy that values are like a compass they give you direction they give you guidance when you're lost they give you something that you can do another thing that AJ and I were laughing about is there's this idea of FOMO fear of missing out and if you don't if you don't have your values aligned and you don't know what they are how can you wake up every day and and knowing where you are and so the minute you get that together I do you for me for myself you see FOMO leaving and and now it's rather than the fear of missing out it's the joy of missing out it's Jomo where I know what my values are and what I need to be doing tomorrow so when I get this call about the crazy party that's going on I'm okay with missing that because I know going to that party and the hangover that I'll be having tomorrow and the work that I'm not getting me done and the values that are not going to be engaged or is are going to put me in another place of once again more anxiety more depression I like it so the FOMO versus Jomo yeah well the other thing that I for me especially growing up I was raised Catholic and a lot of these values that you talk about were hoisted upon me and there was judgment placed on them and what I like about the way that act tackles values is it is 100% up to you it does not have to come from another place it does not Johnny has his values I have my values sometimes they align sometimes they don't and that's okay and having that level of self acceptance is also okay and I didn't really encounter that until college I went to Catholic high school everyone around me was Catholic was also having these values sort of shoved down our throat so just became the norm and then I got to college I realized like wow I can actually choose my own adventure here I don't have to just take what culture and society are telling me is a value and is a virtuous value as you would say the other thing that I just wanted to point out that I thought was really interesting is this analogy that values are like continents on a globe and they're not always seen there's sometimes they're under the surface sometimes they're they're really present and predominant but we have the saying that how you do anything is how you do everything in large part that's because of values your values orient how you do that how you accomplish that goal how you take on that task that new job that new exciting thing yeah absolutely you know and I like the analogy of if we switch from the real globe to like a globe of the world if we think of values as like the continents of the globe of the world you can never see them all at the same time there's always some at the front and some at the back they're not dynamic like books in a they're not static like books in a bookcase they're dynamic they move all so you know values may come to the front in one relationship in the morning and then there may be different values that spin around to the you know a different relationship in a different setting later in the afternoon but the ones that go to the back of the globe are still there they're still available I can bring them in any time yeah and one of the concepts that you often talk about is the reality gap and it's a fascinating concept I don't know that a lot of our listeners have heard of it and what what is the reality gap and how can values as we just discussed really fit in and help with it well we want to talk about the reality gap and the reality slap so reality gap is is you know any little gap between the reality that we want and the reality we've got so we've got little reality gaps opening up all day long you know and and there and that's when we tend to feel those uncomfortable emotions isn't it when there's a gap between what I want and what I've got uncomfortable emotions creepy um I also talk about the reality slap which is those big moments when reality just kind of slaps you on the face and turns you upside down those big moments of grief or loss or crisis or unexpected stuff that you never thought would happen to you and those are much much harder to deal with and uh but basically reality slaps and reality gaps are a part of life and and they give rise to these difficult emotions that we will all feel and so that one of the empowering things about values is that we can ask the question well what do I want to stand for in the face of this in the face of this reality gap or this reality slap this difficult situation what do I want to stand for so it's an immediately empowering question um so you know the the world health organization contracted me a couple of years back to write an act protocol for refugee camps around the world um and uh they you know uh so they're rolling it out at the moment in Uganda and Syria and people are often stuck in these refugee camps for you know 10 years 20 years if they're unlucky but certainly for several years and there's you know uh 300 400 000 people in these massive camps uh and and their losses uh you know they've left their country they've seen their loved ones killed the the pretty horrible places to live you can't uh you know just magically wave a wand and think positively and feel happy but what you can do is live your values in the refugee camp so all day long there's choices do i stay in my tent or do i come out of my tent when i come out of my tent how do i treat the people in the tent opposite am i friendly warm cooperative and caring or am i hostile judgmental uh when i go back into my tent am i friendly cooperative caring to the people in my tent or am i distant and dismissive and cold uh you know do i join in with the community singing and dancing and prayer or do i isolate myself from it so there's lots of little moments during the day in that refugee camp where you can make choices that will alter your experience it doesn't magically fix the situation or or get you out of the situation but it does alter your quality of life within that really difficult situation now that's an extreme case but it's relevant to all of us well it certainly gives you a strong foundation to live your days that's for certain and that perspective right yeah even in dark moments dark places these values can have a very strong role in our life satisfaction and our well-being yeah absolutely you know and one of the ways we we got folks in touch with their values was to ask them who they looked up to in the in the refugee camps you know who do you see who do you admire or who do you respect and what are the qualities you're seeing in that person how are they treating other people in the refugee camp and of course you know this rapidly taps into why it's not like they are right or wrong values but they tend to be some very widespread values across all cultures across all periods of history around you know love and kindness and caring and this kind of stuff you know so values i know is intimidating we talked about the challenge and how a number of participants in the challenge get hung up on this exact one well there's a bazillion wonderful values that you can have in for your life and obviously some are going to be more relevant than others but it whittling them down to that five and we've talked about how tricky it could be so russ is certainly going to let us in on the best way to go about doing that well you know look one thing to say is if if you're really stuck then experiment try you know pick two or three values for a week and play around with them and see what difference that makes and then next week change them or you can change them more often pick two or three values for a day and play around with them and see what happens what you tend to find is that the values that really speak to you will be more fulfilling and rewarding for you you'll kind of you'll have a sense there's a sense of i'm being true to myself i'm getting closer to my heart so you know if you if you're really stuck then just you know i've even had some people that just couldn't pick and i gave them a list of 50 values and and i said all right well just kind of go through them and just label them each one very important quite important or not so important and they ended up labeling everything is very important so and i said all right well let's just flip a coin let's flip a coin three times and whichever three values it lands on do that for this week and then do it again next week and do it again next week and what happens is pretty soon you start to get a sense of it but i don't know if you have the saying in the usa the proof of the pudding is in the eating do you have that saying no okay so do you know what pudding is oh yeah okay all right sorry so the proof of the pudding means you know like if someone's cooked a good pudding we're not going to know if that pudding is going to taste nice unless we actually eat it we can discuss all day long oh what do you think it tastes like and what are the ingredients but the proof of the pudding is in the eating you've got to put the spoon in taste it and then you'll know and it's the same with values you can analyze till the cows come home you know oh you know are these my right values that's not going to get you anyway get out there start playing around with them and track the results and this is where the mindfulness comes in start noticing it what difference does it make what is it like am i being more like the person i want to be how's this influencing my world how's this influencing others you know that's the answer you know it's funny because a lot of people who tend to get in the self-development do it because they want to learn the right way to do things so when they get the three values they got two spots left all of a sudden oh no what if i picked wrong value and so it's that brings on this whole other cascade of stuff falling down so it's like i'll just end it right but i love that like give it a try it's okay and as you change as you get older these values are going to change anyway so don't get so wound up about it well even for us i'd say our values as the listeners know in in getting healthy and exercising have changed and it's reoriented our lifestyle and became that rudder whether it's signing up for that event or actually going to the party we're making these choices based off our values and i like the idea of not making such a commitment to it right we're not getting married to these values we're not going to have our third divorce with these values try them on for a day try them on for a week and you're going to know when it feels right yeah that's it you know um and and they they will start you'll start to get a sense of which values are a good fit for you again a common mistake people make though is thinking that living your values is necessarily going to make you feel good uh if you live your values it may pull you out of your comfort zone into all sorts of challenging difficult situations and at at times living your values can put you in high anxiety provoking situations but uh even though it's not giving rise to pleasant feelings it does give rise to a deeper sense of fulfillment of being true to myself of living life my way well it as you mentioned it's it's the it's the rudder it's going to give you the the right choice to make um i believe you there was i another video i watched this morning and prepped for this where it was the choice point so where you get to a a challenge in your life and now the the the anxiety or the uncomfortable feelings you might be feeling in that moment will pull you in a direction you don't want to go but so you won't have to deal with that but your values will be pulling you in a direction that will put you into that and i really enjoyed there was the the animation for that was fantastic because it was just a fork in the road and we've all been there we've we've all been there and seeing that was like oh great but the best thing about it is that anxiety is letting you know who you have a choice to get better here in that moment if you choose this way over this way and of course once you choose towards your uh your values then that's only going to make it that much easier for you to do it the next time you have that challenge in front of you and for oh for our listeners who had that misconception around goals and values and a lot of our listeners are very goal-oriented fame money respect love all those things how can we help them assist them find those values so they're not just so focused on the goal well i think uh one useful question is the magic wand question you know a wave of magic wand you've got all of those goals achieved you've got all the fame and money and status and the beautiful body and whatever it is that you want to achieve and then okay so then how would you treat your friends how would you treat your children how would you treat your next door neighbor how would you treat your body how would you treat someone you love when they're suffering you know and then do you want to if this is how you would treat yourself and others in the world around you do you want to wait until the day you may you know achieve all of those goals of rich and famous and you know status and whatever or do you want to start living those values right now you don't have to wait till the day you know our media is full of people that are rich and famous and successful that treat other people in pretty horrible ways and treat themselves in pretty horrible ways too you know and so my assumption is whenever i see destructive behavior my assumption is that it's not motivated by values because you know i we've all done destructive things in our lives to ourselves and to others in one form or another and i'm sure it's the same for you guys you weren't living your values in those moments you were kind of hooked by your thoughts and feelings and desires you know so um yeah magic wand you achieve all those goals how would you actually be in the world in terms of treating yourself and others and the world around you let's start living those qualities now i think it's a wonderful way to look at it um i did have a question that was an argument well more of a debate between will we settle it what's that we settle the argument here well it's i will give it to to rest the settle um i know that i now that i'm i'm 45 years old i know at least in my older age i tend to do better with the more structure i have in my life um as compared to when i was younger but i don't know if i would have dealt with that structure very well when i was younger but that's another uh conversation so uh one of our other coaches and i were had this debate of whether or not the five values that you would put together would work or would have it would how it would work if they was put in a hierarchical order of those five and he mentioned that you might have some some words on that if if you i think earlier you said about the rigidity of those values back in in you know 50 years ago so i would imagine you would think about it in a very loose manner just getting them listed in that commitment would be one but your thoughts on that look i think for most people a hierarchy feeds into a kind of a more static way of looking at values if we come back to the idea that they're more like continents on a globe of the world there's no hierarchy there there's just kind of some are going to come to the front and some are going to come to the back because it just it's going to vary from situation to situation you know there's probably times when you're with your friends and family you know that you really want love to be right at the front of the globe but then there might be work situations where that's probably you know going to the side of the globe or the back of the globe there's other values that are more important so i'm not saying you know never do that but i think i think there's a danger in listing them as a hierarchy and that it can be i've got to live this value first you know well you you mentioned that values are about doing and not about feeling i think that is a common misconception that a lot of us have are there any other misconceptions with values that you feel that we should handle when we're tackling this topic um i think um no i think we've covered the the the main ones really flexibility they may or may not make you feel good there's an infinite number of ways of acting on any value you can act on them on any moment you've always got a choice you can you know i suppose one thing to kind of touch on is that values don't necessarily involve physical action it can be mental or psychological action so if your value is self-compassion it might just be saying something very kind and caring to yourself when you're in the midst of pain just acknowledging that this is really hard you know another big one for us and and a lot of our listeners ask for this is time management everyone's so concerned about their time and we try to orient our time around our values but values are not really a good guide for how much time you should be doing something yeah absolutely so uh i get that all the time too people say i've got a values conflict and it virtually it never is it's it's it's a time management conflict you know like the the classic one that comes up is work versus family and and i kind of say well look you know whether you spend one hour a week with your family or 50 hours a week with your family your values towards your family aren't going to change if your values are being loving and caring and supportive and kind and available that uh you know that's not going to alter whether you're there one hour or 50 hours you know uh it's like for that one hour a week that you're there are you available and present and engaged with your family for that 50 hours a week are you there same if your values at work are being productive effective reliable cooperative that's not going to alter whether you're at work for one hour a week or 50 hours a week uh so the question you know so that's the beautiful thing about values is that you can live them regardless of what's going on in your life um yeah but uh they won't resolve time management issues for you well i love that you you sort them in different areas of your life obviously you're going to have values for work you're going to have values for family you're going to have values for yourself and it's important to at least understand those different modes of operation that we're all in because a lot of us get so tied to one of those and and derive a lot of uh happiness and sadness from our work and only focus on that but these values were we want separate values and we want to be clear on what our values are now that we have our values is there anything else that we should be doing with these values to make them more impactful more effective well then we want to translate values into goals and action plans so it's all very well knowing oh well this is my value but then what you know what what does that look like how do i translate it so this i've talked about informal ways that you can live values with kind of flavoring and savoring but there's also um a time and a place to set goals so what are some little short term things i'm going to do to live this value what are some longer term things what are the big overarching plans and then once you've got goals what are the action plans what are the step by step nitty gritty things that i need to do to to you know put this into play yeah well thank you so much for your time dr harris is a fantastic conversation around values so excited it answered some of our questions and i know this is a topic that our audience loves to ask us about and struggles with well and of course i want to ask our audience to go ahead and list those values because of how important they are i know that it completely changed how i was going about my day in that week in that month and i think the more you're able to engage in them on a weekly basis the daily to weekly basis the the better your life's going to be yeah for sure absolutely yeah yeah i mean there's there's no simple solution for a for a happy life but there is a a complex way to have a rich and meaningful life you know and we like that definition of happiness well thanks very much that was a real pleasure of being on the show um and you probably heard of a few uh dog winches and wines there and uh barks as well in the background so that was that was luna's contribution to the will credit her on the show she likes her value of you feeding her yeah okay lovely thank you thank you