G'day leaders. In this episode we discuss gratitude and how it is linked to happiness and longevity. Enjoy!
Why do it count backwards? Oh no, we're now recording.
What? Hello captain.
Come fly with me, let's fly, let's fly.
What are we going to talk about?
I don't know, so leadership, life and everything else. Yeah.
And we're live in Malaysia. No, we're in Malaysia but we're not live. We're recording in Malaysia.
Yes. Hey Michelle. Hi guys. How cool is it that we get to be here, working here? How good is life?
I know and we just did a cooking class. Yes. And learnt to cook two dishes. Yes,
rendang and a prawn curry. Beef rendang. Yes. And prawn curry and oh my goodness,
we got to eat it afterwards. It was amazing. Very full.
Yeah, super full. While we're doing a podcast on a very full stomach.
But it made us think about how grateful we are and so we thought we'd do a podcast on the science
of gratefulness. Yeah, gratitude.
Gratitude. Yeah. Absolutely. Because it's a powerful emotion and it can have a really positive
impact on our lives. And being grateful can apply to the past, the present and the future.
So grateful for what's happened in the past, grateful for where you are now and grateful for
things that are coming up. Yeah. And also you receive gratefulness when people show
gratitude towards you. Yeah. So you can be grateful for things and people can be grateful for you.
Absolutely. It's got an interesting
origin, gratitude in humans. We had to learn gratitude. So obviously we're not the biggest,
strongest animals out there in the forest or out in the savanna. And so we had to learn to work
together and they say, well, they, the scientists say that we learned gratitude to show gratitude
to other people, which would then trigger reciprocation. So if I did something for you,
you'd do something for me. Would that then build a bond and we get to work together? And without
that gratitude, so if I did something for you and you weren't grateful, I don't want to do it again.
Yeah. So the origin of gratitude is to build feelings of, or to trigger reciprocity between
humans so that we work together. Wow. It still applies actually. It does, doesn't it?
When you do things for people and they don't necessarily. Say thank you. Yes. You don't want
to do it again. No, no. That's right. Yeah. So when you go out to a fancy restaurant and build with you.
Yes. Yeah, we won't go down that path.
And there's been lots of studies into the power of being grateful about how it benefits you. So
have you read any studies about, about gratefulness and how it relates to certain things? Yes. So I
know that it leads to increased happiness. Yes. So just the, the, I'm going to call it the art of
being grateful. So appreciating what you have, where you are, what you, where you've been,
contributes to the personal mental state of happiness. Yeah. So you can imagine like,
the last time you were extremely happy, more often than not, it's related to the experience
that you're having and generally something nice is happening and you feel grateful for it and that
triggers the happiness. That's right. And then when you, you have that memory again, it, you can bring
it back up. That's right. And you feel happy again. The smell, the sound, the taste. Yeah.
So I've read studies that show that, that grateful people tend to fall asleep faster. They have
a better quality sleep and they're less fatigued during the day. Oh, I need to get some more
gratitude on, I think. I think you've been telling yourself you're a bad sleep ever since you were a
pilot because you were always worried about not waking up on time. True. I only ever slept through
the alarm once. Once? Once. What happened on that day? Well, I had to catch a cab to the airport
after everyone else, of course. So yeah, yes, it made me paranoid. I can imagine. Yeah. So walk me
through that. So you're, you're an airline captain and you know that you're the one at the pointy end
flying the plane. So that would put no doubt a bit of a fear in you that you're not going to
wake up on time. Waking up to the sound of crewing calling you is not pleasant. I could imagine it,
wouldn't it? And I think that is the origin of your, not great sleep. Possibly. Yeah. Well,
you're not flying now, Michelle. No. You should be grateful and you'll get better sleep. That's right.
You don't have to wake up and, you know, and be at the pointy end of a big metal tube and get everyone
there safely. True. I am very grateful. Yeah. So I know you've got some more things about gratitude.
Yeah. No, I love the, because I'm constantly, constantly talking to the kids about this,
about being grateful and doing a list of things that you're grateful for. But so many studies,
there's, over the last 10, 20 years, there's been a lot of studies into gratefulness and it's been
linked to better heart health, things like lower blood pressure, reduces inflammation. What else
does it do? Reduces depression because obviously it triggers happiness. Yeah. Increased self-esteem.
Oh yes. And I'm trying to find the link there because I do a lot of work on confidence and
self-esteem and the, you know, how to build it, how to achieve it. And I'm trying to find where the
self-esteem comes from. And I guess. Could it be with happiness that maybe smiling or a brighter
outlook, which physically you are more upright and therefore you have the confidence and self-esteem?
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I see where you're going there. I like that. I like that. Because if you think
about it, when you're grateful, you're saying, Hey, I've got everything I need. I've got what I
want. You know, you're developing a mindset of an abundance mindset. A cup runneth over.
A cup runneth over. I like that. And so when you have that mindset that your cup runneth over,
you have everything you want, you have everything you need. Subconsciously, your brain is now
thinking, well, I'm safe. I've got everything I need. So why stress now? Yeah. Yeah. But when
you're always worried, you know, you're clawing for what you don't have and you've got a scarcity
mindset, that then tells your subconscious that you're in danger because there's something that's
missing or lacking from your life. So you then stress probably to give you the energy to go out
and get what it is that you're lacking. And so that then leads to those feelings of, I guess,
depression and the opposite of feeling satisfied and happy. Well, I read a quote by Michael J.
Fox saying that with gratitude, optimism is sustainable. Oh, I like that. Yeah. I love
his mindset that you see him in interviews and obviously he's been, how long has he had
Parkinson's now for? It's quite some time. Yeah. I remember seeing him in the 80s in Family Ties.
He's a fantastic, I loved him in a movie. The movie's name will come to me. Back to the Future.
Secret of My Success or something. Did you remember that one? Was it The Secret of My Success?
Where he clawed his way up from the mail room in our company all the way up to... Anyway.
Doesn't really matter. Great Michael J. Fox movie.
Right. But yeah, but he's got a very positive outlook on life. He's very grateful and
you can tell it comes across in the interviews. Optimism can be hard to sustain if you're
surrounded by naysayers or things aren't going as well as what you wanted. So it can be challenging
on your mindset, but then if you keep thinking about what you're grateful for, that will keep
you on track. Yeah. And that's why they say that you've really got to be careful about the people
you surround yourself with because if you surround yourself with the naysayers, like you say,
that you become one of them. You get dragged into the environment that you spend a lot of time in.
So I love the fact that we surround ourselves with positive people. We've got some very positive
friends and positive neighbors who lift you up. And when you surround yourself with people who
lift you up rather than drag you down, it's easy to feel grateful, isn't it? Yeah. Well,
the power of gratitude, it changes your default attitude. So you meet some people and they're
constantly down like glasses half empty. Then if you have practice gratitude daily or weekly,
monthly, whenever you can, then your default attitude is one of optimism and gratitude
rather than looking for the worst. Can you remind me, we'll come back to this later. Well,
actually we'll talk about it now, about the frequency of gratitude. I have in the past tried
to do gratitude on a daily basis, like write down a list of things that you're grateful for.
And I found it doing it daily, a chore. But when you do it every week or every two weeks,
frequently. Yeah. If you do it frequently, but not daily, it becomes easier because you've actually
got more to think back on, more to go back on. But if you do it every day, you go, what happened
today? And it almost becomes like a chore. And I recently read that that is the case, that they've
shown that people who try to do gratitude daily struggle, people who do it weekly find it really
easy because you've got a whole seven days to think about. It's important though, not just to
wait for major milestones to be grateful. So appreciate the fact that you've had a whole
week of eating dinner at the table with the kids or you got to go sailing or whatever it is.
Not that sailing's an everyday thing, but just all the things that you do, you're able to do it.
My daughter just got her braces off. She'll be very grateful for that. I remember when I got mine
off. That's a big day in a young child's life. Well, I had it done in my twenties.
Yeah. But it's, yeah, if you maybe even set aside a day in the week that becomes your grateful day.
Yeah. I know. Fridays, Sundays. Yeah. A lot of people grateful that it's Friday.
Well, we're coming up to the holiday seasons and that tends to be when most people show their
gratitude and et cetera. But it can also be a time, especially in the holiday season, where
other emotions come up because there's disappointment, there's loneliness.
People can be in a lower state because there's a lot of celebration around and if they're not
in feeling loved or included with friends, family, that it's a time not to be celebrated.
I did read a piece where it says that if you feel gratitude, it squashes other emotions. It's very
hard to feel sad and grateful at the same time. Yeah, you can't. You can't actually feel negative
and positive emotions at the same time. So if you're feeling gratitude, then all of those other
ones can't, they can't play. Yeah. They can't come into the playground. Yeah. So switching
your mind up. Yeah. But sometimes when you're in those lulls, it can be very difficult, can't it?
Yeah. Because it's almost like you can't find the energy just to even think about something
positive. And it's almost like you want to sit there in those doldrums, but it's worth the effort
if you can pull yourself into gratefulness and just look at what you're grateful for. Because
depending on where you live, determines what you can be grateful for. But we live in Sydney
and we are so grateful to be living in that beautiful city. Yeah. And grateful to, we joke
with the kids. We out slept the assassins. They didn't get us overnight and we woke up.
Have you ever had a job or even a relationship where you didn't feel,
as though the other person was grateful for you or that they took you for granted, the opposite of
being grateful. Yes. And the impact that it has. It drains you. It does, doesn't it? Yeah. So if
you're in a job and it just doesn't feel as though you're appreciated, which is the form of showing
gratitude, showing appreciation, then it can be a huge demotivator, especially if you're putting
in a lot of effort and it's gone unnoticed. Yeah. I've worked for two airlines and the first airline,
the staff did not feel any gratitude towards them at all. Their language around it was very negative.
They weren't grateful to the company as well? No, the company wasn't grateful to the staff.
Okay. And so it gets quite oppressive. You don't hang out in the crew room because people...
Oh, but you should be lucky to work with us. I know. That sort of mindset.
And then what staff were actually doing were going out of their way to cost the company more.
And it really was toxic. Whereas then the second airline showed gratitude to their staff in
different ways. Now it may not be the same way that different people appreciate gratitude shown
in different ways. So cupcakes might not be for everyone, but you know, bottles of wine.
We speak a lot about cupcakes. I'm not a fan of the cupcake as a signal at workplaces, but the
the bottles of wine, tickets, staff tickets, small rewards, even a little note in a pigeon hole or
a shout out to somebody. It makes you feel, and we've spoken about this before, makes you feel
included, makes you feel valid and you are grateful and you always want to give more,
more than you pay back. Well, there's a study that I read once about they were raising money
for a university, I believe. So in this study, the people leading the study and the people who are
leading those people who are doing the fundraising, the people who received gratefulness from their
leader, from the person in charge over the next week made 50% more fundraising calls,
just through the act of somebody coming up and saying, hey, great effort. Thank you so much.
Really grateful for what you've done. And they also showed them how what they did contributed to,
so how it connected to purpose. So, and I think that's the double barrel, isn't it?
If you show how people are contributing to something bigger than their role, and you show
appreciation for what they're doing, as per this study, they made 50% more effort in the next week.
So it's simple to do, hey, thanks, great effort this week. And what you did contributed to this,
so thank you so much. You're very valued. How hard is that? But yet how infrequently is it done in a
lot of organisations? I think my personal opinion is that there's ego at play, and potentially
they're not leaders, they're managers, and nothing against a manager as such, but it's a position
given by authority. And they are worried that if they encourage others, somehow they, the others will
overtake them. Yeah. So they will lose their position. That's my personal opinion.
Strange mindset, isn't it? It is.
There's also evidence that gratefulness increases as we get older.
I can appreciate that. We're more likely to be grateful as we get older,
and as I'm getting older, I can understand that. You know, your time is limited on this planet. And
so you start to become more grateful. And then as a result, you start to build those strong bonds
with other people. And there's a real connection between your social network and longevity. If
you've got a strong social network, and you build strong social networks through gratefulness and
reciprocity and looking after each other, as we get older, if you've got a strong social network,
and you've got a group of people that you can lean on, you'll live a lot longer.
There's a lot of evidence that we need a social network as we age, because it makes you feel like
you belong, gives you a sense of purpose. And those people who show more gratitude tend to have
stronger and bigger social networks. When I say bigger, not necessarily bigger in number,
but they've got that robustness in their social network. And you think about places like the
Blue Zones around the world, where they tend to live more in villages and communities where they
kind of know each other. And they've got this social network. That's right. They all help each
other, the community. Yeah. And they get together and they share cooking and food and resources,
and they look after each other. They do their daily walk up to the local cafe and sit down and
say hello to the people that they know. And I've got a feeling that's created through their
connections. That longevity is created through their connections, which makes them feel happy,
makes them feel content, and so they live a longer, happier life. And the good thing is that
I'm noticing as I'm getting older. But you're such a spring little chicken.
Tiny you are. So short. You're funny. Is that I-
Well, you are short. I'm sorry, I looked down on you from a height perspective.
I tend to need less to feel gratitude as well. As you get older.
Yes. Yeah. So less stuff. It's more the experience and the people.
I'm getting that now too. I'm starting to want to really let go of stuff and just have experiences,
collect experiences. Yeah. Yeah. Because why do we need all that stuff?
That's it. It just seems to weigh you down,
doesn't it? That's right. You just got to move it around when you clean.
When you move. Now, one other thing is that what we do is New Year's Eve, rather than resolutions
about what you're going to do- Yeah, no, they never work.
No. This year I'm going to quit drinking. Cheers.
Cheers. Is that we look back on the last year and we have gratitude. We take stock of what
we've achieved and what has happened, what we've done. What we've received.
Yes. And it takes all night into the next day to go through it because that feeling,
and the more you remember, the more grateful you are and then even little things start to come up.
Yeah. And just reminisce and be grateful. That's the secret, isn't it?
It is. Yeah.
All right. So how do we tie this podcast up in a nice little bow and gift it to people?
But before we do that, can I just say, I'm very grateful for you, Michelle,
because without you this podcast would not have got off the ground, would not exist.
Thank you, Guy. I'm very grateful for you. Thank you very much.
Because it would be very boring with just me. And we're alive. No, we're not. Yes,
we are, Guy. No, we're not, Guy. Or Michelle. It would be a strange podcast talking to yourself.
That's it. There's a couple of great comedians who do it. They just get on a microphone and just
rant, but they're not talking to themselves, to their audience. Anyway, I'm very grateful for you.
And how do we wrap this up? Oh.
Be grateful. Yes.
Yes. Try not to do it daily as like a list. Don't make it a chore, but just make it part of
your everyday thinking. I'm so grateful. Because if you stand at the sink while you're washing the
dishes, instead of going, oh, this is a chore, and you can start to think about how or why you're
grateful that you're standing there doing dishes. It changes everything.
Yeah, I get to do the dishes. I get to do the dishes because I've got dishes.
I've got dirty dishes, which means that I just had a meal. I'm very grateful that I just had a meal,
and I'm grateful because I didn't have to go and hunt for that meal. You could go on and on and on.
You could link all your gratefulness to a whole chain of things that you can be grateful for.
Yeah. It's a much better way to live. Absolutely.
Yes. All right. Bollinger, where are you?
That's right. We'd be very grateful. We'd be very grateful if your sponsor is.
We're just talking about gratefulness. We're very good at this. Lint, bows.
Grateful, grateful, gratitude. Yeah.
We'd be very grateful if you reached out. Merch, if you want some Captain and the Clown merch,
we've got t-shirts and caps on our website, captainandtheclown.com with our motto,
more dogs. Yes.
Because we think the world will be a better place with more dogs.
All right. Great to see you again, Michelle. Thanks, Guy.
Take care. Bye.
Bye. Well, that was fun.
That was fun. You're such a clown.
The clown, Captain. Lady captain.
Very good. And who's going to listen to this?
Maybe I'm not. Thanks, Mom.