Happy Habit Podcast

Thomas Gilovich is the Irene Blecker Rosenfeld Professor of Psychology at Cornell University. His work in social psychology includes the key textbook in the field, How we know what isnt so, and has written books that touch on topics such as behavioral economics and the fallibility of human reason. In this episode we talk about the subject of regret, and the impact hindsight has on our making judgements. We explore the relationship between beliefs, emotions and judgements. We ask my people are cautious in the light of a potentially positive outcome. Why do people overstate their abilities, where does this overconfidence ? We explore the subject of biases. And we ask how we can become better thinkers and decision makers. https://psychology.cornell.edu/thomas-d-gilovich Prof Gilovich's books : https://rb.gy/bkj2kv

I'm chatting with Dr Anna Colton, she is a clinical psychologist. We talk about anxiety and why Dr Anna sees anxiety as a rocking chair and also a bully. We ask why people find it so difficult to deal with anxiety and speculate whether anxiety is tolerated because it is a familiar bedfellow. Expect to learn about why we catastrophise when we know we shouldnt. We find out about the stop technique, how and when to use it. And we discuss the area of self-sabotage, and why we might engage in it. https://www.dranna.co.uk/

Antonio Neves is a keynote speaker, life coach and author of Stop living on autopilot, Take responsibility for your life and rediscover a bolder happier you. In this episode we hear about Antonio's view of accountability in life. We discover how Antonio's chaotic childhood (which involved 6 parental divorces and 15 different places he called home), informed his outlook on life today. Expect to hear about how successful people have a tendency to take their foot off the gas once theyve reached a threshold of success in their life. We also hear one of Antonio's mantra's 'how playing to win is different from playing no to lose'. Discover why it is important to remember that life owes you nothing and that your success and failure is on you, and that you don't have to live life alone. https://theantonioneves.com/ https://theantonioneves.com/stop-living-on-autopilot-book/ More Happy Habit Podcast episodes at : https://anchor.fm/mathieu-norry

Cody Royle is the man who coaches the coaches and the author of Tough stuff and Where others wont. In this episode we talk about leadership and the traits necesary to be a good leader. We hear about the significance of self-awareness and empathy when dealing with other people, especially in a team. Expect to learn how leaders and coaches are themselves performers trying to bring out the best performance in those whom they are coaching. We ask what role emotion plays in detracting from our performance especially when under pressure. Why is mastering of communication so fundamental to being a good leader. We talk about how to negotiate obstacles and failure enroute to optimising our performance and reaching goals. Plus expect to learn about growth versus limiting mindsets and how we can maintain motivation when needed. https://www.codyroyle.com/ https://www.codyroyle.com/books

Prof Lara Aknin is the director of the Helping and Happiness Lab at Simon Fraser University. She studies what makes people live happier and healthier lives. What a fascinating area of research and so given the fact that this podcast is all about striving to acquire a greater state of happiness, through fulfilling routines, self-improvement and health and wellbeing I thought it would be more the interesting to hear Prof Aknin's thoughts. In this episode we ask about the effect generosity has on our levels of happiness. We ask if people who work in service of others, like nurses for example, we ask if they are more predisposed to being happy by virtue of serving or giving of their time and energies to others. We also pose the question, does being generous make you happier or are happier people just more generous ? Prof Aknin tells us about her goodybag paradigm. We explore generosity across cultures and socio-economic sectors of humanity. We hear about the generosity of children and what conclusions can be drawn from. Expect to hear the purpose underlying our desire to give to others. Plus expect to hear the distinction between giver and receiver centric gifts, something which I think will give people pause for thought before they buy their next gift for a friend or family member. https://www.sfu.ca/psychology/about/people/current-faculty/laknin.html https://www.sfu.ca/psychology/research/hhl.html

Dr Michael Steger is the Founder and Director of the Center for Meaning and Purpose, and Professor of Psychology at Colorado State University. In this episode we tackle some pretty weighty issues. We discuss the meaning of our lives and the philosphy of appreciating the little moments and I reference Matt Haig and his book Reasons to stay alive, in which he catalogues all the seemingly mundane things in life that are sources of real joy. We define what purpose is and in doing so Dr Steger tells us what he means by purpose being an anchor we throw out into the future. We discuss the commodification of meaning which Dr Steger is very much against. Does following your passion really help you find your purpose ? We ask if purpose correlates with living a successful life. Expect to learn how a lack of meaning and purpose are linked to cognitive decline. We learn that the search for meaning is not uniform across the world, different cultures embark on a search for meaning in different ways. We also ask if our relationship with purpose and meaning has advanced since the days of the great greek philosophers. http://www.michaelfsteger.com/ Dr Steger's Ted Talk : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLFVoEF2RI0

Sinead Cloherty is a nutritionist, a health coach and an expert in making healthy eating, easy, tasty and fun. Shes mentored thousands of clients down through the years with thousands of followers on instagram, where she shares healthy eating tips. In this episode I ask why we have such a complicated relationship with the food we eat ? Expect to learn what what sustainable weightloss is and best to go about it and how it differs from the approach dieters normally take ? We discuss if we should be keeping track of what we are eating and we ask if eating while watching tv is really a good idea ? Discover what mindful eating is and how it can positively impact how and what we eat. From a nutritional standpoint we explore the sorts of foods we should we be looking to consume for a healthy nutritional balance. Plus we talk about behaviour change and how it influences our ability to manage weightloss. https://www.instagram.com/sineadclohertynutrition https://linktr.ee/sineadclohertynutrition https://www.sineadcloherty.com/ More Happy Habit Podcast episodes at : https://anchor.fm/mathieu-norry

Emily Balcetis is a social psychologist and professor of psychology at NYU and author of Clearer, closer, better. She is fascinated by how we look at things and has performed groundbreaking research showing how we can change our perspective to attain our goals. In this episode, we hear how how what we see creates our perception of the world around us. We hear about how much of what we see is in direct focus. How much is in our peripheral vision and the role the brain plays in filling in the gaps, not just in our vision but also in our subjective experience. We learn how this knowledge about our subective focus can be used in the context of health and fitness to enhance performance, simply by changing how we look at a task. Expect to learn about how we can sustain motivation and the importance of factoring in the inevitability of obstacles in the path to a goal. Plus we learn how best to take action that gives us the best chance of sustaining our new years resolutions. https://as.nyu.edu/faculty/emily-balcetis.html Dr Baletis' book : https://www.amazon.co.uk/Clearer-Closer-Better-Successful-People/dp/1524796468

Jonathan Malesic is a Dallas based writer and former academic who holds a PhD from the University of Virginia, he is also the author of The end of burnout, why work drains us and how to build better lives. Jonathan was a victim of burnout himself which prompted him to explore this age old phenomenon. Indeed we discuss the long history of burnout dating back 2 millenia. We talk about the pitfalls if aligning ones identuty with how you make a living. Expect to learn about the 3 key components of burnout. We hear about anti-burnout stragegies. How do we get away from meaning purpose and paycheck ?We hear about the relationship between burnout and lack of career fulfilment. We also discuss the societal pressures that keep people tethered to the treadmill that leads them to become burned out. Jonathan's book >> https://jonmalesic.com/

Dr Alice Pailhès, Ph.D. is an Associate Lecturer in Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Dr Pailhes has a partticular fascination in magic and the psychology behind magic tricks. I'm talking about how magicians use psychology to manipulate, influence, force, redirect, misdirect and distract us in order to bamboozle us with their magic skills. Dr Pailhes' research focuses on the use of magic tricks to study the illusory sense of agency or control. She specialises in studying the subtle factors that influence our decisions without our awareness. In this episode we learn that magic is a conflict between our rational mind, our beliefs and our emotions. We see a trick performed, and rationally it doesnt make sense but there it is before our eyes and so we are left stunned, scratching our heads searching for answers. We also learn that the brain often seeks out the simplest most energy efficient option which causes us to adhere to habits or patterns of behaviour, essentially the brain operates on autopilot which is when we are most vulnerable to being controlled or influenced. We hear about different techniques that magicians use to influence or force a person to do or believe something in order that they fall for the magic trick. Expect to learn about restriction and compliance and how they feature in a magicians act. We hear that its exceptionally easily to influence people even when the person being influenced knows they are being influenced or controlled. The good news is we can take the psychological lessons learned in the arena of magic and apply them in the real world so that we can reduce our liklihood of being influenced. This is an interesting discussion about how our minds work and how we are so very easily influenced by external forces aswell as internal forces and biases, while Dr Pailhes uses the subject of magic to illustrate how the mind operates in terms of it being easily influenced, her observations on psychology apply to everyday life. Indeed we are constantly being influenced by advertising, media and by friends and family. The key is to be aware of when we are being influenced so that we can own gatekeeper to that influence. https://www.dralicepailhes.com/