Teach Happy: Small Steps to Big Joy

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:13] SPEAKER_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome to the program Kim Strobel. Kim is an internationally known motivational speaker for educators and organizations, and she travels the globe sharing the impact of happiness on teacher well-being and student achievement. And she's the author of the new book, Teach Happy, Small Steps to Big Joy.

[00:31] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:35] SPEAKER_01:

Kim, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[00:37] SPEAKER_00:

Thank you, Justin. I'm really happy to be here and to speak with you today.

[00:42] SPEAKER_01:

Well, thanks for joining me. And let's jump right in by talking about the argument for happiness. And I will say personally, I am a person who doesn't naturally think about happiness. So make the case for us. Why should we be thinking about happiness?

[00:56] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well, I think that 10 years ago, happiness was a very frivolous word. And sometimes I kind of laugh before I get introduced, you know, and come out on stage. I'll have this very enthusiastic introduction that people give me and they say, there's a happiness coach in the house. And I think, oh my goodness, 80% of those people hate me before I even come out from behind the curtain. Because what is this happiness stuff? And is it fluff?

[01:20]

And I always tell people, it's not sunshine, sprinkles and rainbows. That's not what it is. But we are entering into, I think, this new age where it's actually called the conceptual age as identified by Daniel Pink. And basically it means that we sometimes feel like life is just happening to us and that we're not fully present and enjoying life and feeling fully alive in our life. And so what I hope to do today is kind of back up this idea of why we need to consider happiness and what it does for our outcomes in the workplace, as well as outside of this profession. And I always say, look, we're all a mixture of happy and unhappy.

[01:58]

You know, this morning I got up, I was super happy. The sun was shining. I went for my run. I got home. The dishwasher wasn't working. I went into unhappiness, right?

[02:08]

Then my son Spencer texted me from Boston and I was back to happy again. And so we are all these emotions. But this is about understanding that as human beings, we can get happier. And that's what I want to draw the research for today. As a former fourth grade teacher and then a school leader and curriculum director, you know, I just see that educators in general are are really sinking in this very demanding, overwhelming profession. And I think it's because I feel like when we decide to serve in this profession.

[02:40]

We have such a big heart for students and what we want to see and do. And so we can't help but constantly give it our all. It's just who we are naturally. But the bottom line is it's also leaving many of us feeling very inadequate in the other parts of our lives because we don't know how to get out of the avalanche of what's happening in education.

[03:01] SPEAKER_01:

A number of years ago, Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a somewhat notorious book called Bright Sighted, How Positive Thinking is Undermining America. And I think in the years since, there has been a pretty substantial backlash to the idea of happiness or to the idea that your boss should have anything to say about your happiness. Take us into what toxic positivity is and some of those related ideas that we hear a lot about and that I imagine you hear a lot about as you talk about happiness.

[03:30] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And I think that toxic positivity is kind of rampant right now. And it's this idea of this cheerleader mentality and that we're not allowed to feel our hard feelings and we're not allowed to talk about our hard feelings. And in fact, I think that we show up as the best version of ourselves. A lot of times at school, we're going down the hallway, we're smiling, we're laughing. But yet we don't really feel that sometimes on the inside because we're sinking in the other parts of our life.

[03:56]

And so toxic positivity is this idea, Justin, when you share something hard, like, gosh, I'm just feeling really frustrated right now. I'm really upset about the student in my class that seems to be derailing everyone else or, you know, really struggling with this teacher that, you know, whatever it might be. And then somebody says, well, Justin, you know what? You're so lucky that you at least have a job and you have a good job. Let's just focus on that. That never leaves us feeling good.

[04:21]

That's toxic positivity. That's saying, you know what, Justin, my comfort is more important than your comfort. And I need you to focus on all that's good. And you're not allowed to have your hard feelings and you're not allowed to talk about them. You know, I think that even in schools, we do this unintentionally. We kind of preach this idea of like, show up And kids deserve your very best.

[04:41]

Well, that is true. But guess what? Those kids aren't gonna get my very best unless I'm my very best. And for me to be my very best, I have to have a life outside of this profession and I have to have my own emotional and wellbeing in check. And that is something that we don't always feel like we have the permission to do or we don't know how to do it, or we don't understand how important it is. And that's where, when I share the happiness research, I think we're going to start to see, wow, there is this strong correlation between my ability to be engaged and very productive in my job when I'm there, but also I'm allowed to kind of reclaim those other parts of my life.

[05:18]

And for the book, Justin, the thing is, I think that we're told this, you know, like one of the things that really just goes right through me is when we preach self-care to educators, it's like, Of course, they'd like to do self-care, but the bottom line is they still show up to their job on Monday morning and it's no less hard than it was the week before. And so with the book, I wanted to get really nitty gritty. Like if you're ready to create more ease in your life and more space in your life and more joy in your life and more happiness, I'm going to tell you that these are the small, tiny steps that you can begin to take that will make that happen.

[05:53] SPEAKER_01:

Love it. So I think for the listener who is dealing with perhaps the normal stressors of life, but also perhaps some acute stresses either in one's personal life or on the job, or maybe just in a really difficult work situation, let's start with the research about happiness because people tend to think of it as a bit of a fluff topic, but there's quite a bit of science behind it. Take us into some of that if you would.

[06:16] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, of course. So what we all have is called a set baseline happiness level. So maybe Justin, My baseline happiness levels here and maybe yours is a little bit higher than mine. And something good happens in our life. I don't know. Maybe we get a pay raise or we buy a new home or we get a new car.

[06:31]

We get married. You know, our kid gets into their university, whatever it is. We experience these good things in our lives on probably a weekly basis. And our happiness level goes up for a period of time. But it's always going to come back to baseline. Now, it might take two hours to come back to baseline, two months, two days.

[06:50]

but it's always going to reset itself to whatever your baseline is. The part that's really interesting, the neuroscience part of the brain is that the same is true, Justin, when we endure really hard things, we actually know that people can have very, you know, big, big T and little T in their life, big trauma and little trauma, even back from their childhood, or maybe, you know, they had different experiences and, disease, illness, adversity, challenges, injustice is done to them and their happiness levels will go down. But for almost all human beings, our brain has a tendency to reset. Now, if you're like me, you fight with the research a little bit because I'm kind of like, I don't know. I think if certain things happen to me, I don't know that I would ever regain my baseline happiness levels. But you probably like me, know people who have endured

[07:42]

Some really terrible things in their life. And while they may carry that grief with them, what we do see, or I have evidence of it, of people I know that they do tend to go on and live joy filled, meaning filled lives. And so I see proof of it all around me, but it is a hard thing to kind of accept. Now, the next question people say is, well, Kim, why is Justin's baseline higher than yours? Like, where does this baseline happiness level come from? And this is where I think I'm going to shock you, Justin, because this is when the crowd is kind of like it really opens their eyes.

[08:16]

So if we think of happiness as a pie chart, what we know is that 50 percent of your long term happiness is genetic. It comes from your mom, your dad, or a mixture of both. And Justin, when I say this, 80% of the heads in the crowd drop, and people are thinking, I'm so screwed.

[08:37]

What are your thoughts on that, Justin?

[08:40] SPEAKER_01:

Well, it makes me think, boy, that's an inconvenient fact as a motivational speaker if 50% of happiness is genetic.

[08:47] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah. And I always tell people, you know, I was born to like a really loving, nurturing mother, but her brain is just set to like pick up anything, anything. negative or worrisome. I always said that she missed her calling. She would have been like a great quality control inspector.

[09:03]

And then my dad is kind of this like happy-go-lucky guy. And so it's kind of the way that we're all born with, you know, even a set baseline weight, right? Like some of us can look at McDonald's French fries and gain 15 pounds and some of us can eat those every week. So 50% is genetic, but I don't want you to lose hope. I want you to stay with me here. So where I think it really gets interesting is that we can take every external circumstance, Justin, that you've ever had in your life.

[09:33]

What kind of family did you grow up in? Were your parents married, single, divorced? Did you have money? Did you not have money? What were your childhood experiences? Did you get bullied?

[09:42]

Did you not get bullied? What were your adult experiences? Right now, what kind of money do you make? What kind of home do you live in? We can take every external circumstance that a person has had And the research says that those things altogether still only account for up to 10% of your long-term happiness. The reason this is kind of eye-opening is if you're like Kim Strobel, you've sometimes let your jobs steal way more than 10% of your happiness.

[10:12]

You have let people steal more than 10% of your happiness or experiences. And while I tell people, yes, we're going to have experiences that take more than 10% as they should, right? Like if my husband decides that, you know, he's leaving this marriage tomorrow, I can tell you that it's going to steal more than 10% of my happiness. The issue, Justin, is when we stay in the gutter far too long and we let these, so in the teaching profession, it's reasonable to sometimes think like, okay, like this profession is just eating me alive and it's stealing my happiness, even though I want to, show up and I want to lead my teachers. Right. But I'm not getting out of the door till 6 p.m.

[10:55]

I'm answering emails all day long. I have parents who are complaining about what the lunch menu was last week or that their kids not getting it. You know, my friend who's a superintendent texted me yesterday and she's like, you know, oh, as a superintendent, I basically deal with people who are upset about sports way more than their academics. Like this is what I deal with all day long, Kim. So it's really easy to kind of feel like, okay, this education system is out of control, which I think sometimes it is. And here's what I tell people though, we cannot control the education system.

[11:27]

I don't think we can, but your power lies in that you can control how you operate in this system. And that's where I think the 10% is kind of enlightening. It's like, oh, so, okay, I'm responsible and for this, right? I'm 100% responsible. So do I want to continue to play victim to whatever these circumstances are in my life? Or do I want to step into warrior mode?

[11:50]

Do I want to take control of this? And now I'm learning that I can, that it's only 10%. How do you feel about that? Is that a shocking number to you, Justin?

[11:59] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, well, it's encouraging in the sense that there's room for agency, right? There's room for us to decide. There's room for us to take action. And one thing that I wanted to ask about in terms of taking that action and making some of those decisions and setting some of those boundaries is around work. Because I think historically we've had a big problem with overwork in our profession, and that's starting to get some attention now. And people are starting to think very seriously about how much they work, how hard they work, how much they give at work.

[12:27]

And I'm really seeing reactions that are all over the place, ranging from, I really don't care at all about my job, which I don't think is super great for educators, all the way up to just the level of overwork and burnout that we've always been prone to. Tell us a little bit about minimum effective dose, which you talked about in the book, and some of those boundaries around work.

[12:46] SPEAKER_00:

So if 50% is genetic and 10% is our external circumstances, that leaves 40% of the pie, Justin, which means that every human being has the ability to increase our happiness levels by up to 40%. And it has to do with things like you just said, basically your thoughts, your actions, and your behaviors. What are the thoughts that you're consistently thinking? What are the actions that you're taking on a daily basis? And what are the behaviors that you're exhibiting? And the reason that this is so important is, like you said, we kind of have glorified and praised over work.

[13:21]

I mean, I worked in a school one time that was a wonderful school, but they gave this like draft out every Friday to like the teacher of the week. And it would be like, Mrs. Thompson stays here every night until 6 p.m. She gives it her all. She shows up for her students.

[13:34]

Her car's here on the weekends. We're celebrating Mrs. Thompson. And I'm going, no, we are not celebrating. We're celebrating Mr. Smith because he knows that he's more than a teacher.

[13:43]

And he gets out of his classroom every day at four. You know what I mean? Because he has other things that he's interested in. And so the reason this has happened is we've all been fed kind of this formula for success, Justin, from our parents who were well-intentioned, from our school teachers and from society. And that roadmap was, Justin, if you want to be successful in life, here's what you need to do. you need to work really hard in school and get really good grades so that you can get into the really good college.

[14:11]

And when you get into the really good college, we need you to buckle down because now you're competing against more and we need the high GPA. So if you get the high GPA, and you get the good degree and you land the good job, now you better put everything you got in it. You want to be successful in life, Justin, put that head down, do what it takes, give it your all. And then once you do that, you can make the money, buy the nice home, get the nice car, have the 2.5 kids. And now when you've achieved all of these things, you've arrived at happiness.

[14:41]

And even you and I kind of are like, well, we know that's not true. These societal scripts are deeply embedded in who we are. And what we do is we link our value as human beings to how hard we've worked in a day. You know, like when I leave this office, if I'm not completely exhausted and given it my all, and I'm like, yes, Kim, you put in a 14 hour workday, which is ridiculous, right? It's like, why am I only valuable or do I think good of myself or well of myself if I've done that? The research is, around happiness, Justin, and this is why I now go into schools, businesses, organizations, banks, and hospitals and train their employees is because we actually know that that formula is completely backwards.

[15:26]

We actually know that when I can teach you to put your happiness as a priority in your life, which has to do with the minimum effective dosage, which we're going to get into. When I teach you happiness habits, what actually happens is when those come first, we start to elevate every other area of your life. So the formula is actually that happiness is the very thing that that leads to success in your job. And here's why. When I can teach you or your teachers to get their brains at positive more times than negative, neutral, or stressed. And what I mean by that is not toxic positivity.

[16:04]

I'm talking real strategies that help rewire their brains. Here's what happens, Justin. A positive brain is 31% more productive than a brain at negative, neutral, or stressed. positive brain is 10 times more engaged in its job. It's three times more creative. When we see these statistics across the board, we start to understand that employee happiness and well-being affects our bottom line.

[16:35]

It affects how we show up for students and it affects how we feel in and out of our job. And so one of the things that we've talked about, one of the strategies is this idea of the minimum effective dosage, which is you can boil water at 212 degrees or you can boil water at 276. But my question becomes, when I put the spaghetti noodles in the pot to boil them, if I boil them at 276 versus 212 degrees, Do they like completely metamorphosize into something completely different? Like, do I put noodles in and out pops a chocolate cake with white icing? You know, no, they're still noodles. And in fact, they're loosey goosey.

[17:18]

And so what I find is that, and by the way, school leaders, they even report higher levels of stress than school teachers. School teachers are at about 75% of school teachers report high levels of stress. School leaders are at 84%. And they are the last ones to leave the school building, you know, and they feel like they need to be, right? Like they feel like they have to model that behavior for their teachers. And so I tell people it's about finding this very sweet spot that says, you know what?

[17:50]

Here's the sweet spot. Here's where I'm doing my job well, but I have enough left over at the end of the day for my family and maybe my hobbies, maybe my physical exercise. The other pieces that are really important in my life, there's space and time for those two. And many people go, okay, Kim, well, we've heard that before. Can you give me some research that backs it up? And so there was this really interesting study done by Jack Nevison.

[18:24]

And what we know is that when you put in about 50 hours of work a week, You are going to get out of that about 37 useful hours. Right. Because let's be honest, Justin, I might be in this office working all day long, but I'm over here searching for makeup, which I've already been doing this morning. Or I got on this other website, started reading about, you know, something totally unrelated to my job. Like there's only so many useful hours our brain can put in. What we know is when you take that from 50 to 55 and you say, you know what?

[18:55]

I just need to put five more hours in. I've just got to finish this last report. I've just got to deal with this last teacher. I've just got to do this last thing. Put five more hours in. You actually lose seven hours of productivity.

[19:07]

You go from 37 hours, Justin, to 30. So you work five extra hours and you lose seven hours. And it's because our brains, they start to go wacko. when we get to stressed, right? And we're just not being as productive or as engaged in our job.

[19:27] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so a law of diminishing returns beyond that kind of sweet spot. And I appreciate what you said about kind of changing the culture away from celebrating overwork, celebrating the person whose car is in the parking lot on Saturday and Sunday, and instead recognizing that we're here to do a job as effectively as possible, but that does not necessarily mean working as much as possible. One concept, Kim, that I wanted to ask about related to that is the idea of flow. And we've probably all heard of that idea of flow from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's research on flow. And I know he's got a great book on that. We want to be in that state where we feel like we're making a difference.

[20:04]

We feel like we're doing good work. We feel like magic is happening and we don't want to be in that exhausted, you know, I've been here 60 hours state. We want to be in that flow state. So take us into some of the research on flow. you

[20:17] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. So my definition of flow is a little bit different than, and I've read his book and it's fantastic, right? It's like when you're in a basketball game and it's like, you don't even know what's happening. You're hitting every basket, you're just in this amazing state or you're working and all of a sudden it's been three hours and you're like, oh my gosh, I didn't even realize because I'm just so immersed in this. My idea of flow is, first of all, I can't stand the word balance, Justin. Work-life balance, it's another word that just goes right through me because the bottom line is I could never attain it.

[20:47]

You know, it's like, OK, if I'm knocking it out of the ballpark in my career, then my family is suffering or I don't have time for exercise or there's zero time for hobbies. Or if I'm knocking it out of the ballpark over here, you know, in my parenting, but my my marriage is not getting enough. It's like I always said that my tombstone would say that Kim tried for balance her whole life and never made it. And I got so sick of feeling like a failure to that word. And so. I started thinking of it as this idea of flow, because flow feels a little bit lighter and a little bit easier, the word itself.

[21:24]

And to me, here's what that means, Justin. And I think I have a big piece of this in the book, but there's this life will that basically says we all have about eight pieces of the pie that are kind of important to us in our life, our marriage, right? Our family, our relationships. our finances. For many of us, it's our spirituality or our faith, exercise and our health. You know, there's eight different pieces, our hobbies, our recreation, what we do for fun.

[21:54]

Yeah, we're supposed to do that as human beings. We're supposed to have hobbies and things that bring us alive. And so what this will of life does in that chapter is it really helps you look at these eight things and say, okay, I want to rate these on a scale of one to 10 and 10 is I'm knocking it out of the ballpark in this area. And one is I'm not giving much attention to this area. And you're not going to, the goal isn't to have all eight nines and tens on the wheel of life, because again, then we're back to balance. We're not talking about balance.

[22:23]

What I encourage us to do is to say, okay, let's pick one or two pieces that have a score that's less than I want. And what would happen in my life if I spent the next three months giving that area a little bit more time, which means I'm going to have to give a little bit less over here. And it might be my career, right? And going back to the minimum effective dosage, here's the thing, Justin, if you tell me, you know what, Kim, I'm 30% better at my job because I work 65 hours a week than the person who works 45. I'm 30% better. I'm going to say, okay, well, maybe it works for you.

[23:00]

But if that's the case. You blow the research right out of the water because the research says you're not as productive and you're not as engaged as you think you are. You're right. But the problem is we're usually not that much more productive if we put in all those hours. And so is it worth it? That's what we have to ask ourselves.

[23:16]

Is it worth it for what we're losing? And when we're looking at that will of life, here's what I tell people. I just want you to be at 51%. Like if you're at 51 percent, I'm feeling good in my family life and 49, you've just tipped the scales by 1 percent. And now you're getting in flow with that particular piece. And so I tell people we have to evaluate the important pieces of our life and we have to say, OK, I want to feel good more days than not.

[23:44]

in my job. I want to feel good more days than not in my family life. I want to feel good more days than not when it comes to my physical health and by exercise and taking care of myself. It's not about blowing it out of the water, but it is about evaluating and saying, okay, you know, and if you think of flow as a creek, you know, water flowing down, you're going to run into some rocks, right? Like you're going to have to navigate, you're going to have to change course, but it's knowing that you're still drifting. You're still flowing.

[24:16]

You still have momentum headed into the direction of the things that are important to you.

[24:24] SPEAKER_01:

Well, Kim, I really appreciate what you're saying about small changes and kind of tipping that balance to having more good days than bad and to shift the equation a little bit. What are some small actions that we can take or little habits that we can build to move things in the right direction?

[24:39] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Well, we only have to move the needle by one percent. We really do, because that one percent, you know, there's a lot of evidence on that. And it's kind of like combined interest. You know, I always tell people, I want you to pick one of these tiny little habits that I'm teaching you. It could be the minimum effective dosage.

[24:54]

It could be the topic of gratitude, which, by the way, gratitude is one of the top five research based happiness habits. that is gonna work on that 40%. And talk about getting your brain to positive more times than negative, neutral, or stressed. Gratitude works. Now, this is not a topic that is new to us. I mean, I always say Oprah preached gratitude to me in keeping a gratitude journal for 15 years.

[25:18]

And I never did it until about eight years ago. But I'm gonna tell you why this works. I'm gonna tell you what the research supports. What we know, Justin, is if I can get you to write down three different things that you're thankful for every single day, that after about 30 days, I actually create a new neural feedback loop in your brain. I actually rewire your brain because the brain has thousands and thousands of roadways and whichever roadway you travel down the most, right? Which is like, if I'm constantly, you know, whatever you focus on grows, right?

[25:54]

So if I'm constantly focused on you know, this set of negative Nelly teachers that I have in my building that make me crazy. And I'm just like harping on it and talking about it. And, you know, it just grows. It's like, then I get more evidence of how difficult they are. And you have a roadway in your brain that just keeps taking you down. Again, I'm not saying we don't acknowledge the difficulty, but sometimes we ruminate and we make things worse.

[26:18]

And so When I get you to write down three different things, I actually start to take your brain in a new direction. And the reason this works, Justin, is because it becomes a part of who you are. And all of a sudden, more good than bad starts popping on your radar. You start to see it and notice it, even though it was there the whole time, because your brain is wired now to pick that up. And the reason why we need to do this is that if you're an average human being, you have about 70,000 thoughts a day, Justin. Did you know that?

[26:51]

70,000 thoughts. And if you're a stressed human being, you have about 120,000 thoughts. And if you're an average human being, what we know is that 80% of the thoughts that you're thinking in a day's time are negative. Which means when you put your head on the pillow at night, most of us have had 56,000 negative thoughts in one day's time. And what's crazy about those negative thoughts is that 95% of the 80% that are negative are the exact same thoughts you thought the day before. Yeah.

[27:24]

So it's like just this constant. And the reason being is that back in ancient times, caveman, cavewoman times, our brain had the amygdala and the amygdala had one job, which was to constantly scan for danger or negativity. Because if we weren't on high alert all of the time, you know, we would die. The issue is, is it's 2024 and you still have an amygdala and your amygdala is still trained to scan for negative. So it's not your fault. But what we know is that we can rewire that.

[27:55]

So my rules are get a notebook, write the date down, put the words at the top. I am thankful. Jot down three things you're thankful for, but make them specific. I'm not just thankful for my health. That's too generic. I'm thankful that I have legs that help me run 40 miles a week.

[28:15]

I'm not just thankful for my family. I'm thankful that on Thursday nights, we go on a pizza date with my mom and dad. You have to be specific, but it's a two minute practice. And I'm going to tell you, Justin, people underestimate how influential this is on our brains. And in fact, I have a gratitude prompt and tracker that I can give you that is a downloadable that has five different prompts that kind of get us looking for gratitude in our life. And it starts to teach our brain, okay, did I see anything good today in this area of my life?

[28:49]

And I'm happy to send you that link if it's helpful, but it is one of the top five happiness habits that we can use. That's a two minute practice that works on that 40% that's in our control.

[29:01] SPEAKER_01:

We'll definitely put that on the website and give people a link where they can download that tracker. And certainly there's much more that we could get into in the book. The book is Teach Happy, Small Steps to Big Joy. Kim Strobel, if people want to get in touch with you, follow your work, or learn more about working with you, where's the best place for them to go online?

[29:20] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, they can just go to strobeleducation.com and you'll find everything there.

[29:26] SPEAKER_01:

Well, Kim, thanks so much. It's been a pleasure.

[29:27] SPEAKER_00:

Thank you, Justin.

[29:30] Announcer:

Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.