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077: Penny Locaso on hacking happiness
3.3k Plays1 year ago
Penny Locaso is the world’s first Happiness Hacker on a quest to teach 10 million humans by 2025 how to flourish in life.
Voted one of the most influential female entrepreneurs in Australia, Penny works with governments, educators and the likes of Google, Microsoft, Deloitte, and LuluLemon, to empower people to release their fear of uncertainty, and build a more intentionally adaptable society.
Penny created the world-first Intentional Adaptability Quotient® (IAQ®) psychometric tool, which decodes the skills required to not only navigate but flourish in complex and uncertain change. She’s the author of Hacking Happiness, a Harvard Business Review contributor, a passionate yoga teacher, a faculty member at the esteemed Singularity University, and a student of psychology and trauma-informed therapy with world-renowned teacher Gabor Mate.
In this episode we chat about:
- Penny’s definition of happiness, embracing emotional diversity and learning how to navigate a range of emotions effectively.
- that women often suppress negative emotions due to societal expectations, which can lead to issues like anger being misplaced.
- the concept of "Angry Mum Syndrome," a term she's exploring to understand how women deal with suppressed anger
- challenges faced by women who often take on excessive responsibilities, delving into the "Martyr Mother Syndrome" and the need for better communication within families.
- the relationship between productivity and happiness and that the traditional concept of productivity, often associated with constantly doing more, has become problematic.
- the importance of self-care, taking micro-breaks, and recharging mental resources to maintain well-being.
- that while humans are naturally good at adapting, much of this adaptation happens unconsciously.
- the Intentional Adaptability Quotient, a psychometric tool she developed with the goal of empowering people to adapt intentionally, which measures a person's level of intentional adaptability and allows individuals to assess their adaptability skills and identify areas for improvement.
- removing the word "should" from your vocabulary and replacing it with "I want” to shift the focus from external pressures to personal desires, allowing individuals to prioritize tasks that align with their values and needs.
- the key skills that constitute intentional adaptability - these include:
- focus - essential for dealing with distractions
- courage - using fear constructively
- curiosity - maintaining a sense of wonder and exploration
- two practical strategies for promoting happiness and well-being
- device-free family dinners, providing a platform for open communication and connection
- a practice called "Rose Rose Thorn Stem Bud," where family members share positive and negative experiences of their day, fostering emotional expression and understanding.
- the relevance of intentional adaptability in the context of neurodiverse individuals, and Penny emphasizes the potential for growth and development in everyone.
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Transcript
Introduction & Hosts' Backgrounds
00:00:00
Speaker
This is Life Admin Life Hacks, a podcast that gives you techniques, tips and tools to tackle your life admin more efficiently, to save your time, your money and improve your household harmony.
00:00:12
Speaker
I'm Dinero Roberts, an operations manager who continues to battle with somewhat of a productivity addiction. I'm Mia Northrop, a researcher and writer, and let me count the ways I've been triggered by angry mum syndrome. It's a real thing.
Interview with Penny Lacasso
00:00:27
Speaker
In this episode, we interview Penny Lacasso, author of Hacking Happiness about how to intentionally adapt and increase your focus in a world full of distractions.
00:00:39
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Life Admin Life Hacks. This conversation with Penny took us in a few different and delightful directions as we touched on the traps of productivity, intentional versus unintentional adaptation to change, and simple habits to support happiness. So if you want to find better balance and reset your expectation about what is enough when it comes to Life Admin, listen on.
00:01:01
Speaker
But before we leap into today's topic, we're so excited to reveal an offering we've been dreaming about for a very long time. Listeners, we're thrilled to let you know first about the launch of our new online course, Life Admin Foundations. Now you can take your learning to the next level with our immersive online short course that helps you set up the game-changing life admin tools and processes
00:01:22
Speaker
to drop your mental load. Yes, the word we hear most often when it comes to life admin is overwhelming and we know that setting up the right tools and systems makes the biggest impact in getting it under control. So this course provides you with a step-by-step learning experience that has been developed for an international audience.
00:01:40
Speaker
The
Life Admin Foundations Course Overview
00:01:41
Speaker
course helps you set up foundational digital and organizational tools, such as a shared digital calendar and dedicated life admin email address, to-do lists, reference lists and checklists, cloud storage for essential files, a password manager, time management and scheduling, and crucially for those in relationships
00:02:00
Speaker
reducing and sharing the mental load. The Life Admin Foundations course is the perfect choice for you if you learn best by doing. It's got a combination of video modules, practical activities, links to our recommended apps and websites, and downloadable templates and quizzes.
00:02:15
Speaker
So you're actively applying the concepts and strategies to your own life admin challenges. The course content drops once a week over six weeks to keep you focused at a sustainable pace. It's a structured learning path with clear milestones, keeping you on track and accountable to your goals. If you are ready to take the next step, transform your life admin and reclaim your headspace, enroll now at lifeadminlifex.com.
Penny's Mission & Personal Journey
00:02:41
Speaker
Penny Locasso is the world's first happiness hacker on a quest to teach 10 million humans by 2025 how to flourish in life. Voted one of the most influential female entrepreneurs in Australia, she works with governments, educators and the likes of Google, Microsoft, Deloitte and Lululemon to empower people to release their fear of uncertainty and build a more intentionally adaptable society.
00:03:03
Speaker
Penny's work creating the world-first intentional adaptability quotient, psychometric tool, and education program was recently published in the American Consulting Journal of Psychology. IAQ decodes the skills required to not only navigate but flourish in complex and uncertain change. Alongside Penny's entrepreneurial endeavors, she's the published author of Hacking Happiness, a Harvard Business Review contributor, a passionate yoga teacher,
00:03:28
Speaker
a faculty member at the esteemed Singularity University, and a student of psychology and trauma-informed therapy with well-renowned teacher Gabor Mate. Welcome, Penny. Wow, Penny. That's a pretty impressive resume. It always makes me feel uncomfortable, which is silly, right? Because you should be proud of your achievements. But when you're a keynote speaker, you have to have these kind of bios that have all of these social credibility points.
00:03:56
Speaker
That's kind of what that is, which is really, I think that's why it makes me feel uncomfortable, right? Because if I had to describe myself as a human in a conversation like this, I probably wouldn't do a lot of that stuff.
00:04:07
Speaker
Well, be proud and shout it to the treetops. So thanks so much for coming on the show. One of the reasons we were so excited to speak with you was your goal to help people move from frazzled to flow without sacrificing themselves. And we know a lot of our audience are desperate to move out of chaos and overwhelm to calm, but everyone's stretched so thin and getting your life admin sorted is one path.
00:04:30
Speaker
Moving towards that clear estate and justice like it's one of many and like us your happiness hacking happiness initiative was born out of your own personal needs so we'd love to start today's episode with you telling us about the moment you decided to turn your life upside down to pursue hacking happy.
00:04:48
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting, right? I think significant change comes in two forms. It can either be like the light bulb that you're referring to, or I refer to the other form as the dimmer that gradually gets turned up over time. And I was the dimmer. And I hear this a lot from other women that I work with in my coaching, where it's kind of like
00:05:05
Speaker
it's like this in a conversation that gets louder and generally that time period is around three years and that was what it was for me. There was a series of events in my life over a three-year period where that dim I just got sort of turned up gradually and then it got to the point where it was like the light was so strong and the voice inside was so loud I could no longer ignore it.
00:05:24
Speaker
If I think about one moment that kind of went right, that you can't sit with this any longer, a change has to happen. My son was like two and a half years old and we were living over in Perth amidst the oil and gas boom. I was working for Shell as a senior executive in the dream job. I was busy.
00:05:40
Speaker
I was always busy. I was always working towards the future. I was definitely burnt out, but I didn't know it because I had been so normalized operating in overdrive. And I went out into the backyard in my busy stage and I said to my son, come inside, let's let's hang out and do something. And he turned around at the age of two and a half. And he said to me, I can't mom, I'm too busy. And it was like a dagger through the heart because I was like, kids don't know what busy is. He's listening to us. And that was the moment where I'm like,
00:06:10
Speaker
What does Busy say to a small child? It says, I don't have the time for you. Other things are more important. And that was the moment where I was like, right, that's it. Something's got to shift and I felt inside this internal
00:06:23
Speaker
conflict between the success that I'd been sold and ticking all these boxes to get to that successful state at the age of 39 and sitting there going, why am I feeling so exhausted and so unfulfilled? Even though I have the white picket fence, I have everything I was told was success. I was like, there's got to be more to life than this. And when I sort of step back and ask myself, what does success slash happiness look like for me?
00:06:45
Speaker
It was human connection. It was positively impacting the lives of others. It was sharing experiences and being present
Understanding & Embracing Emotions
00:06:51
Speaker
in them in the moment. And they were all the things that were sidelined with my busy. And that was the moment where I went, right, I'm going to turn everything upside down and realign my life so that I can bring more of those things into every day.
00:07:04
Speaker
And so, Penny, you mentioned that, you know, that being this voice, this chatter for three years was gradually getting louder. What was that voice saying? No one's ever asked me that. The voice, if I look back now and I speak straight from the heart, the voice was saying to me, how much is enough?
00:07:22
Speaker
How much is enough? I think that's a really interesting question to ask ourselves because I think in the society that we live in, it's like the goalpost just shifts every freaking day. I think that's why so many of us feel like, I've had women say to me, no matter how fast I run or how
00:07:42
Speaker
And it's like, who are you keeping up with and what for? Because it's a very externally validating way to live your life. And so I think that voice saying, how much is enough? After sitting with that for a long time, what I realised was I had more than enough. And yet I was living like, almost living like
00:08:03
Speaker
I had nothing. I was pushing myself so hard. My life depended on it. All it was doing was compromising my health and my ability to show up for my son in the way that he needed me because of what I thought was so interesting back at that age when he was little. What you learn pretty quickly about little kids is they don't really want stuff. They just want you and your time and attention.
00:08:28
Speaker
One of the episodes we recorded for this season was around the life admin that we don't do. Like, where do we draw a line? And it is sort of that idea that other people might be doing all these tasks that you think of things that you also have to do, or they've got these goals that you think, oh, I also have to reach those things. And it can become so overwhelming trying to achieve all these things or do all these things that when you actually sit down and ask yourself, actually, that's not actually important to me, or that's not a priority to me.
00:08:58
Speaker
It's really helpful to take some time to think about.
00:09:01
Speaker
Yeah. How much is enough? What is sufficient? What is satisfied? So we talk about satisfies in a lot. What we'll do, what's, you know, the Sheryl Sandberg thing, what's the Sheryl Sandberg weight done? Better done than perfect. That's my favorite one. Let's all take it down a level, everybody. So Penny, how do you define happiness hacking and how can it improve our daily lives? What is happiness hacking really about? Yeah. So first of all, I think defining happiness is perhaps the most important thing.
00:09:31
Speaker
Because I think many of us have this, I don't know, it's almost like a definition that doesn't work. And perhaps that's why happiness polarizes people so much. And I always say happiness is not skipping down the street and painting rainbows every day because you're joyful every minute every day. That's not possible, nor is it healthy. The research shows us the happiest people in the world are those who are emo diverse. And what that means is emotionally diverse. And so the way I define hacking happiness is it's about
00:10:00
Speaker
learning how to ride the wave of every emotion that life throws at you.
00:10:05
Speaker
knowing you can come out the other side just a little better than what you were before, because you have the right skills, support structure and resources to enable that to happen. Talk to me more about emotionally diverse. What do you mean by that? Emotionally diverse. And this is what I see a lot. And I'm also exploring a lot in my own life, studying compassionate inquiry with Gabor Maté, which is one of the top therapies in the world for trauma-informed counseling.
00:10:33
Speaker
And what I mean by, you know, diverse is about actually connecting with the body and understanding how you're feeling and actually allowing yourself the space and the time to process that feeling. Whether it's the feeling that makes you feel good or whether it's a feeling that makes you feel bad. And what I see in the current society that we live in is that most of us have actually gotten really good at suppressing the stuff that doesn't feel great. And it's almost like a recipe for disaster.
00:11:01
Speaker
I think it's part of the reason why we're seeing such pervasive burnout because we've gotten really good at walking over our bodies.
00:11:08
Speaker
morning signals. So emotionally diverse is about allowing yourself the space and building the skill to process every emotion that life throws at you and not labeling emotions good or bad, just saying they are just feelings. And if I allow myself to sit with that feeling and to process it and understand what sits behind it, I'm actually going to be a happier and healthier human as a result
Reassessing Productivity & Happiness
00:11:33
Speaker
of that. And that's what the science tells us.
00:11:36
Speaker
Oh, so Penny, what are some obstacles that people are facing when it comes to trying to actually do that? Oh, shame. Let me give you an example, right? So when you do trauma-informed therapy with Gabor Matei, you can't deliver this for other people unless you do it on yourself first, right? And so the whole first four months of a 12-month program is me working through my own stuff.
00:11:59
Speaker
So anger would be a beautiful example. And I know you guys are going to relate this. And I know listeners who are mums are definitely going to relate to this. Right. There is a thing called angry mum syndrome.
00:12:11
Speaker
Tell us what that is. I'm pretty sure I've had it on my lover currently. I'm only starting to research this because I'm going to do a podcast on myself because I've become so curious about it, right? So I have these moments of anger where, and they're not talking like throwing things around the house, where I'm triggered. And I respond in ways that make me feel embarrassed, you know, to people that I love. It's misplaced. It's misplaced issues, right? I get triggered when I don't feel valued.
00:12:38
Speaker
That's what I have realized in this work. And when I don't feel valued by the people I love the most, that's my boyfriend and my 13 year old son, I then respond with anger, you know, and unpacking that has been extremely powerful. But what I've discovered in unpacking that is that this is a common theme with mothers. Oh, yeah.
00:12:58
Speaker
I'm imagining all the people nodding vigorously as they're listening to this because, yes, who doesn't feel undervalued as a mother in any given day with all the stuff that's swirling around in our households and the constant giving, giving, giving and doing, doing, doing and feeling unappreciated or unacknowledged.
00:13:15
Speaker
Yeah, but back to Dana's point, anger is an emotion that we associate with shame. Women aren't meant to be angry. We're raised, if we go back to the analogy, we're raised to be good girls. Good girls don't get angry. People please. It's why so many of us suffer from people pleasing perfectionism. I cannot tell you how many high performing women. I know, it's like the two go hand in hand. And so talking about anger as a high performing woman who looks like she's got it all together is not something we do because it's shameful.
00:13:45
Speaker
And yet all of us, like you talk about barriers, all of us are sitting alone with that emotion thinking we're the only angry mum that ever existed. And it's bullshit, basically. And that's why I want to open the conversation on the podcast and I want to bring some angry mums on to talk about the triggers that sit behind this and normalise anger as an emotion because it's not bad. It's actually extremely healthy when it's processed effectively. It's when we suppress it that we do start throwing things around the house, right?
00:14:13
Speaker
Yeah, and usually we suppress it, suppress it, suppress it. Not talking from personal experience here, but then you have like a massive blow up that is usually disproportionate to the final thing that pushed you over the edge. It's absolutely true. And it's often the ones we love the most that are on me receiving it, right? Does that answer your question?
00:14:35
Speaker
That's one of the common obstacles. Yeah, I mean, I think that's entirely relatable, that anger that sits underneath. We've talked about anger in a few different guides. We've talked about it in terms of relationships. And if you come across Harriet Lerner's book, The Dance of Anger, and unpacking some of the
00:14:52
Speaker
the relationship dynamics that happen that trigger this anger. And as you say, it's misplaced. We've talked about it even in that respect. We've also talked about triggering situations where there's the mental load shared disproportionately in households and how frustrating that can get when you're the one that's carrying all the knowledge of what's going on in the household and everyone else is oblivious.
00:15:15
Speaker
I'm sorry that is not really sustainable so what we talk about is trying to share that mental load and free up people's headspace and help yeah look at these emotions unpacked where they coming from and then taking also some practical steps so that you are feeling triggered in this way.
00:15:34
Speaker
So, you know, you talk a lot about productivity as well. And there's sort of this idea that a lot of women are sacrificing themselves on the altar of productivity. Talk to me about productivity and happiness, because there is there is something about being productive and feeling that sense of reward that then it can go into overdrive. When does it start to get unhealthy?
00:15:55
Speaker
I mean, I've spoken all around the world about how from my work, what I believe is that productivity has actually become the disease. And when I say that, productivity as a term, if you go back to its origins, it's a manufacturing term associated with machines.
00:16:15
Speaker
It's not even a human term. Do you know what I mean in terms of its origins? And yet we've applied it to humans in terms of how do we just get them to do more in every day? And what that has resulted in, women come to me and say, can you help me be more productive? And I'm like, not if what you're asking me to do is teach you how to squeeze more into an audible day. And this is why I think, what I see with productivity is because of the way we've defined it and its origins and then how
00:16:41
Speaker
we've applied it without intention and without consciousness. It means that every waking moment for most women is full. Yep. And if you go to the psychology, the way that you be the most happy, healthy, high performing version of yourself is if you allow yourself the space within a day, micro moments within a day to recharge your batteries.
00:17:04
Speaker
And what I see with most of the high performing women that I work with, I will have women tell me that they can sit on Zoom for 10 hours a day and only take breaks for a cup of tea or to go to the toilet. Like this is where we are at. OK. And so there is a theory called the conservation of resources theory. So if you think of your body like your mobile phone, right, because we all can relate to the mobile phone and you've got a battery on your mobile phone when the mobile phone needs a recharge, the battery light decreases.
00:17:34
Speaker
So conservation of resources theory is that you wake every day with a level a set level of mental and physical resources available to you and how you choose to use those resources throughout the day will determine whether your battery is recharged or whether that little light gradually goes down. Now what happens is when we don't take these micro moments to refresh and be present whether it's
00:17:57
Speaker
taking the dog for a walk, whether it's just sitting and eating your lunch without a phone, without anything else going on. Like this is the kind of thing that recharges our batteries. When we don't do those things, the light goes down, you get the warning signal like the mobile phone saying the battery is about to go flat. And what's happened is, like I said, we just walk over the warning signals and continue on. And then we all wonder why the next day we wake up with our battery feeling like it's on half
Impact of Devices on Presence
00:18:24
Speaker
charge.
00:18:25
Speaker
And then again, what the science tells us, if we continue to do this and operate on half charge every day for a prolonged period of time, your central nervous system is hyperstimulated. And it's not a matter of if it's a matter of when you will fall into a hole. Like this is chronic stress. That's what we're talking about. And now what we're seeing is it's manifesting in those who have never had issues in this space who tend to be, you know, the top performers in business.
00:18:50
Speaker
Yeah, that's really interesting. I got an Apple watch one Christmas and one of the bits of, you know, poured into the health data that it starts measuring. And one of the metrics it shows is heart rate variability, which is
00:19:05
Speaker
sort of the downtime between the beats of the heart. And it's essentially one of the things it's measuring is your parasympathetic nervous system and your sympathetic nervous system. And whether you're in final flight or not, all the time, I was in final flight pretty much all the time. I had really low heart rate variability. I was kind of shocked by that. So yeah, immediately started looking at things like
00:19:31
Speaker
sleep hygiene and meditation, all these things to like switch off my fight or flight. It's that sort of intense, poised, ready for anything. What's the next thing that's coming my way, you know, state, which I think a lot of people find themselves in unless they, you know, go on lengthy holidays and finally relax, but then it's back to real life and you're back in that fight or flight state.
00:19:52
Speaker
once again. It's interesting what you say about the Apple Watch, right? Because this is something again, it's very in the present for me. So I've actually stopped wearing my Apple Watch during the day. Yeah. Because what I have realized is that it is a distraction.
00:20:08
Speaker
And I actually find that the data is another distraction and it makes me disconnected from my body and it makes me less present. And whilst I know data can be helpful, I actually think we're at the point where it's like it's become another job. Yeah.
00:20:23
Speaker
I think that from the work that I'm doing, the somatic work with Gabor Matei, it just is another way for us to disconnect and have someone else tell us about our bodies. And what I've found is that the more present I am and the more I actually sit in my body and feel like, how am I feeling? And, you know, and allow the space for that. I don't need the watch. I don't need the phone. I can work out myself pretty quickly what the hell is going on, you know?
00:20:49
Speaker
And for those who obviously can't see us, I just held up my wrist to show that I'm not actually wearing my watch anymore either. It was useful to wear it for a few months and get sort of the data dump and a bit of a baseline and go, hmm, I'll learn some things. And then I took it off as well. I realized it was becoming an interesting, yeah, crutch in a way for not cheating in in my own sort of visceral sense about what was going on. It was, yeah, it was as a whole other podcast episode.
00:21:19
Speaker
Are you allowed to know I'm not alone? Penny, can we sort of shift a little bit? I think one of the things that's interesting is that often our listeners really struggle with kind of being down on themselves in terms of not having their life admin under control and really sort of blame themselves for lacking in motivation and really not being motivated to get on top of things.
Mindset Shift: 'Should' to 'Want'
00:21:40
Speaker
So how can people develop a growth mindset to help them approach things like life admin with a more positive outlook? Wow.
00:21:48
Speaker
If I had the answer to that, I can fix the world. You know, like I'm all about really simple practical things because I think change made in tiny bite-sized pieces when you're overwhelmed seems more doable and the little wins are what motivate you to sustain the practice, right? The first thing that I have found very helpful in this space is I think as women, most of us live in the world of should.
00:22:16
Speaker
And I don't think should serves anyone because should is, I would say, has a direct relationship with guilt. Because when you should be doing something and you don't do it as women, like you guys just mentioned it, we get really good at berating ourselves for not being enough. And so I would challenge or invite people who operate in that space to try and remove the word should
00:22:42
Speaker
from their vocabulary for a week and replace it with I want. So rather than waking up and thinking about all the things you should be doing, I would be asking yourself, what do I want to do today that is going to help today feel like a great day? What do I need today? What does my body need today or my brain to feel like today is a great day?
00:23:05
Speaker
I think it's really good advice and we often talk about thinking about where you are in the season of your life and what's actually really important to you and thinking about, is it actually about saving time? Is it about saving money or is it more about the peace of mind and making sure that you don't have that chatter and thinking about, okay, well, what are the life admin tasks I should be focusing on given what's important to me at this season?
00:23:27
Speaker
knowing that you can't do everything. And so, like, think about how to prioritize based on what's really important to you right now, rather than, as you say, women very good at shooting all over themselves in terms of, you know, I should do everything. The reality is, it's really, you'll never be caught up in life. You'll never get to the bottom of absolutely everything you could do. Being really intentional about deciding where to focus your efforts based on what's important to you right now.
00:23:52
Speaker
Oh, that's a nice segue to talk about the intentional adaptability quotient.
Developing Intentional Adaptability
00:23:57
Speaker
Walk us through it. Walk us through it. It sounds so technical. Again, about six years ago, I mean, I came from a corporate background and I wanted to have a credibility stance, so this is an external validation.
00:24:10
Speaker
around the work that I was doing. I know how corporates work. They like research and they like boxes ticked. With that background and that conditioning, I decided off the back of seeing productivity become the disease. I was seeing this six years ago. I decided to work with a number of global giants and invite them to come with me on an experiment. An experiment
00:24:33
Speaker
to create a skill set that enable people to adapt with intention. And the reason that I wanted to do that was that what I was saying was that we as humans are brilliant at adapting, but most of our adaptation is unconscious.
00:24:48
Speaker
adaptability in that realm has kept us alive as a species and served us to a point. But you only have to look at how unconsciously we can adapt off the back of COVID would be a brilliant example, right? We just did what we had to do. People just got on with it. A lot of people didn't question things. They just did what they had to do, which is fine. We're bringing it unconsciously adapting. But what I was seeing in my work was that we had gotten so good at unconsciously adapting. It was actually
00:25:14
Speaker
people would wake up one day like what i'm seeing with my coaching clients at the moment and they're like i don't even recognize who i am anymore let alone like who i am when i look in the mirror and i don't feel good about myself i don't feel good about the work that i'm doing how i don't even know how i arrived here because we become so good
00:25:31
Speaker
at adapting to societal expectations, many of us don't step back and bring intention to the forefront of the decisions that we make, because we're so caught on the hamster wheel. So I wanted to understand what were the skills that enabled us to bring more meaning and intention to the forefront of how we adapted.
00:25:50
Speaker
Like I say, six years later, we were able to develop a psychometric so people could assess how intentionally adaptable they are and then understand where their opportunities lie and get some really simple practical interventions to enable them to amplify this skill because the more intentionally adaptable we are, the better we are at navigating uncertainty from a place of meaning, which is pretty much life as we know it, and the better we are at that, the more likely we are to flourish
00:26:19
Speaker
And like we mentioned earlier, find that flow state. Yeah. I was intrigued by the diagram for the question that you've got on your website and the skills that it focuses on. So if everyone can imagine this circle and on the outer edge, it's got reflection, self accountability, human connection and experimentation. And then in the middle, it's got focus, courage, curiosity. So can you talk us through these? Are these all the skills?
00:26:45
Speaker
What are we looking at here? Yeah. And it's kind of, how would you say? They're kind of all interlinked, right? So the center of the circle. So the core skills for intentional adaptability are how do you learn to focus in a world that's now designed to distract you and create the space for more of what matters. Courage is about how do you use fear and failure to shape the change you want to see in your own life and the world around you.
00:27:09
Speaker
And curiosity is about how do you actually show up as a curious human? We are born curious, but by the constructs that we push ourselves through over time, curiosity is actually diminished. And curiosity opens the door to possibility. And yet most of us will say we're hugely curious, but the reality is when you ask people how curious, when do you practice curiosity? They say in their spare time of which they have none.
00:27:37
Speaker
So they're kind of the core skills, the outer circle, human connection, experimentation, reflection and self accountability. When we teach the three inner skills, we use those skills in order to build the inner skills. So they're all equally important.
00:27:53
Speaker
And like I say, I think about intentional adaptability. I'm a passionate yogi. I've been doing yoga for 20 years. I'm a better human because of it. And I like to think of intentional adaptability like a practice. It's not like you'll ever be at 100%. It's that you need to show up on the mat every day. And some days you'll have great days and other days won't be so great. But the more you show up on the mat, the better you get at navigating the uncertainty from a place of meaning and the more likely you are to have flourishing days more often.
00:28:21
Speaker
Beautiful. I'm looking at these skills and I'm also, it's reminding me of some of the big five personality traits. You know, there's that acronym OCEAN. So the big five personality traits are openness and conscientiousness and, you know, how extroverted or introverted you are, things like that. I'm thinking about some of the experimentation about like being open to new experiences and the self accountability stuff.
00:28:45
Speaker
Some people talk about whether they believe it or not. They're just not made for this kind of thing. They're not made to do life admin. They don't have the right personality. It's a kind of character flaw that they can't focus. And again, we come back to the shooting and that kind of thing. But these are things that can all be learnt, right? These skills can all be developed.
00:29:07
Speaker
Without a doubt, I mean, what you're saying to me is just the story we attach to an experience. And I would say that, you know, people who sit there and say that it's, that's the story you're telling yourself, because you've had an experience where you felt you weren't good at this. And the brain is a pattern recognition machine. And it will always go back to your past experiences, which is why we reinforce the stories that we tell ourselves, whether they're true or not.
00:29:34
Speaker
But all of these skills can definitely be developed over time. We might all start with a different baseline, but why does that matter? If I'm only competing with myself in the context of being the best version of myself, it really doesn't matter where anyone else's are.
00:29:50
Speaker
And I think it's interesting on the other side too, Penny, because one side is people say, I'm really bad at this and that's why I'm really disorganized. And I guess that feels like one proportion of our listeners. And then the other side are the listeners who unintentionally adapted, usually when they've had children and taken on everything to manage their household and the feeling that their partner can't
Household Responsibilities & Connection
00:30:12
Speaker
share the load or then they can't do it. They're not capable of doing it. And it does feel like people fall often into, you know, there's quite two diverse camps and it is that same idea around thinking about, you know, how, how responsible you are for taking it all on. And I guess unintentionally adapting or, you know, to take on all this responsibility without actually having the conversation and thinking about how you can set yourself up to be more curious about how you could better share things within your household.
00:30:42
Speaker
And I think you touched on two interesting things. One thing I just want to say is a caveat around what I just said.
00:30:46
Speaker
People with ADHD operate very differently. And so I just want to put that in there because I've worked with a lot of ADHD clients and they do feel like they're not good at this stuff because their brain does get distracted more easily by bright shiny things. And on the flip side of that, they can get so focused where nothing else matters. You know, it's like the world could blow up and they're still sitting there. So I just want to say what I said before, perhaps does not apply in that realm. I think with ADHD, you're operating in a different space.
00:31:15
Speaker
What you're referring to though Dana is really interesting because again it's come up in my group coaching program quite a lot.
00:31:21
Speaker
is what's called Marta Mother Syndrome. And it is like we as women are really good at taking everything on because we think that no one will do it the way we do it. And maybe they won't, right? Maybe in some respects that might be true. But to your point earlier, right, is done better than perfect. And what happens is that we take all of this stuff on. And then, like I said before, we get angry and we get triggered and we complain because it's like, well, no one's helping me. I'm doing everything. But it's almost like,
00:31:47
Speaker
You don't even, one, we don't ask for help. We're not very good, I'm generalising, but we're not great at asking for help. And we're not great at having conversations about how we feel. Often we wait for it to explode. And as I say, this came up not from me, but a lot of my clients saying, I'm a martyr. You know, one woman was saying to me, her child was two months old and she decided to go and do an MBA. She goes, you know, I have to develop myself, I'm on leave.
00:32:13
Speaker
Like that was her example of just trying to be everything to everyone all at once.
00:32:19
Speaker
Yeah. In our book, Life Admin Hacks, we talk about over-functioning. That's another thing we know from Harriet Lerner's work. There can be that over-functioning, under-functioning dynamic in a household. And it's often the women who are the over-functioners and doing it all. And thank you also for making the point about, you know, neurodiverse people and their different challenges with the levels of organization. We've actually got another episode in this season.
00:32:44
Speaker
that talks about admin for people with ADHD because that is something that we've been asked about quite a lot. It's a whole other thing. One final question for today. How can individuals and families think about developing healthy habits and routines that promote happiness and wellbeing? I'm going to just give two really simple things, and it's never rocket science, right? It's the simple stuff that works.
00:33:08
Speaker
The first thing I would say is one of the most powerful things I have seen in families that have great relationships and are connected is that they have dinner together on a regular basis and that's dinner without no devices.
00:33:22
Speaker
There are no devices, there are no distractions. It's like, I'm present and I'm at dinner. And that creates the space for conversation about the day and for sharing. So that's the first thing I would say, very simple and practical. The second thing I would say, and this is something my son and I did for years, especially as he was growing up, was when you have that dinner, can you do something that connects you in to how you're feeling as an individual?
00:33:46
Speaker
and a family member. And so we used to play this beautiful little Grungeud game called Rosebud Thorn. Have you heard of it? Yeah, I do it with my kids every night. We call us Rose Rose Thornbud. We've elaborated to different parts of the bush. I'll tell you about it.
00:34:03
Speaker
Because it's a great little practice. Yeah. So basically everyone at the table has to do a rose, a bud and a thorn. And a rose is something great that happened in the day. A bud is something you're looking forward to. And a thorn is something that didn't go so great. And the beauty of this exercise, if we go back to where we started, is it allows you to be emotionally diverse and not be ashamed about that.
00:34:24
Speaker
you know it's about saying to your children every emotion is good and it has space in this world and so that's why it's great because it's not just gratitude it's about saying how do we acknowledge the good and the bad things and what i found really interesting having done this for a very long time with my son and equally my boyfriend joins in when he's here on the weekend.
00:34:41
Speaker
is that it's really interesting how often there is no form for us. And I think that is because we've been doing it so long. Contextually, you start to go, the bad stuff's actually not that bad. So it's kind of, it's a bit grounding, is probably what I'd say. But tell us how you...
00:35:00
Speaker
How do you do it? Yeah, as a similar, we do, we do rose, rose, thorn, stem bud. So we do two roses, two good things, and then our thorn. And it's funny because often my daughter and I, there's no thorn. My son often likes to sit there and he's like, there's got to be a thorn. There's got to be something. It sounds like there was nothing. Move on. Which is, yeah, interesting. The stem, we added stem. Stem is something that you were proud of yourself for that day.
00:35:30
Speaker
It could be anything. It could be I remembered to empty my lunchbox into the compost. It could be something that happened at school or, you know, I said something nice to blah, blah. It could be anything. And then, yeah, the buds, something to look forward to. It's a really nice thing to do before they go to bed. We do it before bedtime. It lets them sort of get some things off their chest and often things that they've been simmering about during the day come up at that, you know, that quiet time at the very end of the day.
00:35:57
Speaker
So, yeah, I can't remember where I heard it from. It's gone up from somewhere else as well, but it's a nice little tradition. It was very helpful during the pandemic, actually, in the lockdowns to find the good things that happened each day and what you're looking forward to. I think, you know, if I go back to your question, Donna, if as a family you can create those moments in the day
00:36:17
Speaker
where you're like, I just think we get so busy. And like with my son, you know, the kids, they don't listen to what you say. They watch what you do. They watch your behavior. So just creating small moments where you can just be in the moment with them. You know, like I make a real effort now to have breakfast with my son. And it's like, why, like, how is it we don't even have time anymore to stand for 10 minutes? Like I like to stand and have breakfast.
00:36:44
Speaker
But why is it that food or even eating now, like how often is eating partnered with another activity because we want to be more productive? We don't even have the time. I don't mean digestively. It's horrendous what that does to your body over time. But that's what we do. So even just, you know, how can we find those moments of presence with our children during the day? It doesn't have to be hours, you know, 15 minutes.
00:37:07
Speaker
in the morning is massive without it being rushed and like, I just don't have time for this. Yeah. There's so much research about families who have dinner together in terms of all sorts of outcomes in life that are impacted by the simple ritual of sitting down and having the evening meal together. Like it's astounding in how it impacts education and all sorts of life outcomes.
00:37:32
Speaker
And they found the same with teams. So MIT did a study on the most productive teams in the world and they found the most productive teams in the world had lunch together. Like they went out of the office and they took a break together and they talked about things that were not work related like life. Oh, that's really interesting in this kind of hybrid world that we find ourselves in. So anyway, that's an interesting point for us to finish up the conversation anywhere.
00:37:57
Speaker
I'm thinking about that. I'll tell my kids that over dinner tonight. I've got teenagers and getting them to the dinner table is a struggle and we persist, but now I've got some more evidence about why we should continue to persist. Evidence-based parenting. Children, listen. Thanks so much for sharing everything with us today. It was such a pleasure.
Where to Find Penny & Closing Remarks
00:38:18
Speaker
Where can our listeners find you if they want to hear more?
00:38:20
Speaker
They'll find me at hackinghappy.co is my website. I'm pretty prolific on the old LinkedIn. I like to say the things that everyone's thinking and afraid to say. So if that sounds like it might be of interest, feel free to connect or follow me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. Show notes for this episode are available at lifeadminlifehacks.com. And if you're a fan,
00:38:41
Speaker
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