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Hi, welcome back to our two part series, the interview with Dr. Thomas W. Nielsen, where he is talking to us about finding the keys to meaningful happiness. Again, we are discussing in more depth what it means to find your why and how we apply this on a practical level. In this part of the interview, Dr. Nielsen goes into more detail about the different dimensions of giving, how that includes giving to yourself. What healthy giving looks like, what it doesn't look like. And really gives us some important insights into how giving can be a strategy that gives us a sense of meaning, a sense of purpose, which of course will then affect our anxiety levels. He talks more in depth about how this affects our wellbeing in general. I know that you'll enjoy his insights in this second half of the interview. So here it is.

Adriana: Please do tell us a little bit about those, those categories.

Thomas: Okay. Yeah, absolutely. Each of them, each of them is a study on their own, of course, and there's tons of research backing up these. That's why I've chosen them actually. I didn't invent them. I didn't, I mean, for example, I didn't invent sleep as, as you can imagine. I didn't invent exercise. All I've invented in a way to help myself initially, and I found later on that teachers and anyone who's interested seems to also sort of think it's a useful little acronym. All I invented was this acronym that contains this little collection of evidence based areas that we need to look after in order to look after ourselves. So the acronym, if you're listening, is self care aims. And it's a long acronym, but once you've done it a couple of times, it's not so hard to remember. And sometimes when I'm not near my computer, sometimes I'm on a trip and whatever in my diary, I just write down self care aims and I go tick, tick. Oh, I'm a little bit behind with this. I need to catch up with that. And so it's a quick little way that you can catch up. So self care aims. If you were listening and you wanted to write it down, you could write it down vertically. And we can also, of course, put a link in, in the, um, into this later on.

But S is for sleep. You know, most people need seven to nine hours of sleep and it's important to think about the sleep and sleep is a huge problem in a modern day age for young people as well because they and the light sources that we have and the social media and the phones and everything often takes us a little bit away from that time where we should be sleeping.

E is for exercise. We have to exercise regularly. It doesn't matter so much what you do, as long as you get your heart rate up you do it regularly and don't sit too much.

L is two things for love, love and laughter. Love is almost a bit of a, a synonym for the meaningful life that we're talking about. Now in relation to self care, how does it apply to yourself, of course, specifically? It includes, includes sexuality and romantic love, of course, but it's also a lot broader because it, it asks the questions, have you, Have you spent enough time with your best friend of late? Because it does give you this sense of, of, if you don't want to call it love, you know, unconditional positive regard, or this sense of feeling that, that, you know. This feeling, whatever we call it, we have with other people and, and, and, and other beings, animals as well, and, and nature even, you know, love of nature. So is that love coming towards us in enough doses? Laughter, I often put in there because it fits with the L, but the research shows it's very healthy to have some laughter every day if we can. And of course, it's often something we do with, uh, Uh, with our friends and our close ones, so it fits a little bit, Uh close together there. Love and laughter is for the L.

F is for food, of course, again, just being a synonym for diet and hydration and all that comes with that.

Um, C is for creativity. Um, and think about that broadly because It can be many things to different people.Like I don't paint and don't do sort of normal creative things, but I do do jujitsu, which also happens to be my, um, exercise, but it's also very creative because you know, you're trying to, you're trying to not get in a Pringle yourself and you're trying to put someone else in a Pringle. So it's very creative. It, Bruce Lee said, You have to express yourself on honestly, and I feel like in Jiu Jitsu, I express myself honestly. So it's almost like it fulfills a creative, a creative outlet in me, as well as in this case, the exercise. And that's one of the things we learn once we get better at this, that many of them that can overlap. So they fulfill many areas in our lives because we just love, love them. And tend to fulfill other areas.

Uh There's two A's and it doesn't matter which order is it, but one A is for autonomy. It's important to feel freedom, have a sense of control. And so if we have toxic relationships, we need to seriously think about how we can change that. If we have toxic work environments, we have to seriously think about how we can change that. Um, and think about this broadly again, because I sometimes tell that it's interesting how, um, Um, how, um, some of the data on happiness historically has had the most, some of the most dismal result results in from the old Soviet Union countries and some of the lowest level happiness, not necessarily the poor, poorest countries always.Because interestingly that those, those countries in the former Soviet Union, they often had potatoes on the table and a roof over their head. But what of course they didn't have a lot of was autonomy, freedom, the fear of a big brother watching over you and so on. Um, so you, you might say, well, what if you live in Brazil or you live in Australia? We, we don't have that problem, do we? Well, I beg to differ because you can make yourself a slave to, let's say, the phone. Where's my phone? It's over there now. But you can make a slave to technology, to social media, to a lot of things, to your work very easily, even though it's self imposed. So this idea of autonomy is really to think about all the levels where you just get a sense of freedom in your life. I have a motorcycle. And again, I say to my students sometimes You know, that might be because I'm having midlife crisis and that might be, that might, might be true as well. But I do think that it's, I have the motorcycle because I also really love the freedom of just sort of flying through the wind. I have to go to work anyway, but if I can take the bike, I always take the bike because it's my 15 minutes of freedom wind flowing through my hair. Haven't got so much of it, but. Ah, it's just it giving me so much freedom and joy. What is your joy? Figure out what is what follow your passion so you can have this sense of freedom. I won't speak as much to all the other ones because then it's all about that but I think autonomy was worth just mentioning about because that can be a little bit sort of ambivalent.

The rest of them are quite easy to understand like for example the next one R is for residence. We all need a place where we can come home and recharge our batteries and think about the day that has been, the day that that's going to be tomorrow. Whether you live in a camper van or, or a big house and mansion is often not so important. The research tends to suggest that it, what seems to be important to all of us is that's a certain level of cleanliness, certain level of order. And then there's a little bit of aesthetic beauty to bring up a spirit, whatever that aesthetic beauty is, is your preference.

E is for, the environment. And here I often mention, think about the natural environment. Why is it that hospital patients need less pain medication? And if they have a tree outside their window as opposed to a brick wall, we don't really know from research why that is, but we just know that that is the, the, The leaves out there on the trees have a very beneficial influence on our health. So think about, you know, we're lucky where I live in Canberra because we're so close to nature. We can just drive five minutes and we're in the bush on the mountains or an hour to the sea. So, but not everyone does that. And so unless you take the opportunity to be in nature, it's again, we can be self imposed in this prison if you like. self care.

A is for, Uh, the other A is for achievement. Most people are happiest if they achieve a little bit. So there can be big achievements like taking a degree or having a meaningful job, or it can be little achievements. Just reading a good book, meaningful book while you're on holidays, lying on the beach or whatever it might be. But we're usually happiest if we have a little bit sense of having achieved things at the end of the day. So it's something worth considering in relation to our happiness.

I is for income. So having said that money doesn't make after a very basic level, Money doesn't make us happier in at least in terms of that deep, meaningful happiness that is of most importance as opposed to the pleasurable happiness. Um, it's really still important to consider that aspect because it is, it is a foundation unless we have that basic. ability to look after ourselves and our loved ones. It does impinge very much on our happiness and sometimes health if we don't have those choices, choices that come with having enough money. So it's very important aspect to consider in our lives in order to be happy.

M is also two things. It's from mindfulness and meditation. And I put them together because the research is just so clear that mindfulness is really important for our health. But if you're not necessarily ready for meditation or you don't want to take that up, then mindfulness is something to consider in and of itself. But of course, meditation in many ways is just a very concerted and systematic way of, of exercising mindfulness.
So it's something to consider in our lives. The more we can be mindful in everything, the healthier it seems to be for us.

The last one is, is for study. And it's just, uh, as again, a synonym to help us remind us that the brain needs to be exercised as much as our muscles. And it's actually the same thing, use it or lose it. So even into old age, we know now that, you know, challenging the brain, challenging our intellect can produce even new brain cells, even though many of them are also dying out in old age. We, it's the best way to, to, to, to stay vital and well, have good cognitive function into old age is to continue to have this quest for extending your capabilities cognitively and to extend to learn and to study. And I often suggest There, I often suggest study yourself and study the world because studying yourself in many ways, of course, is what the self care invites you to do. It's really important to know thyself in order to be able to function and contribute in the world.

So sorry, that was a little bit of a long spiel, but it was as quick as the introduction I could to self care aims and we make a little link so people can study them and also adapt them to their own needs because that's the last thing I just need to see say whenever I introduce this little um tool and that is that every everyone should be invited to adapt them to their own lives because It cannot contain everything that perhaps you're passionate about. For example, you might say, Oh, Thomas, where is gardening? I love gardening and that makes me so happy, but I say, yeah, okay, maybe you can put it on the environment, your way of being in nature, or you can put it on the exercise. What it doesn't really matter. You just this idea that we can personalize it. And there's little tabs, sub tabs under these main categories. Or you might say, okay. Where's jiu jitsu on this self care games? Cause you know, I love jiu jitsu, but I might say, Oh yeah, maybe you could put it on the exercise because it can't, can't really contain all types of exercise anyway. So there's always a bit of personalization that's needed, but I will say to the best of my capabilities, those areas is a really good collection of a big pool in the research. As to what is evidence based of and universal, it seems for all of us that we do need to have certain levels of that in order in our lives, in order to have the surplus with which to live the meaningful life.

Adriana: Oh, what a, what a complete answer. I really appreciate that. That's really helpful. And, um, I like your idea of just having the acronym there as you're traveling or whatever and you can look and see how you're doing on these different levels, these different areas, and see which ones maybe you're not doing as well in.

Thomas: That's exactly it. Because A lot of people will say to me that, ah, I was already doing well with this. I was aware of that. But there's usually for all of us, there's like two or three or four areas that we haven't thought so much about and perhaps could be better in our lives. So that's usually what people say.
That's interesting you say that.

Adriana: I'm getting this idea of. looking at your life as a sort of a stewardship that you need to care for yourself and you need to care for others and you need to recognize that your, your physiology, your body, your brain has needs. You need to care for them. You talk in your chapter a little bit about the difference between self compassion and self esteem this, this. This idea of these, this acronym of this, the areas of self care seems to me like self compassion, right? We're not looking in the mirror and saying, I'm, I'm so great. You're actually caring for yourself in these concrete ways. you talk a little bit more about that difference, esteem and self compassion?

Thomas: I think that's really important because you can imagine how, for example, I'm in education. So, you know, I often talk to teachers about. It would be important, you can imagine, to teach self care aims together with this philosophy of the meaningful life. Because then they really, really complement each other. You understand that it's not selfish hmm. yourself, because it's actually the only way that you can be something for others. But you can know that there can be a big difference between me getting up in the morning, And looking in the mirror to beautify myself and go out in the world and hope that everybody will notice me and look at my latest fashion and so on.
So there's ways of looking after yourself in one way. And then there's ways where I get up in the morning, I put on some clothes, I feel good. I put on some porridge in my tummy so I feel happy and functioning and I can go out in the world so that, you know, it's, it's, it's both looking after self. But one is done with the philosophy of the meaningful life and one is done perhaps for the, for more unconscious sort of selfish reasons. And we know, and there's no judgment in this. But I think we do need to let people, we do need to educate the world that there is a research base that shows that one is a lot healthier than the other, because then people have a choice. It empowers people to make a choice. And in fact, I know from research in education that you often see this big change in students when they suddenly realize that I can look after myself, but it's really important.
I look after myself with, in a compassionate way, not in a necessarily just in a. Self esteem way, because coming back to your question, the research is quite interesting because self esteem is all over the place when it comes to the research, you know, people who are alcoholics and drug addicts and abuses and also successful people can have high self esteem.
Self esteem is no predictor. of success in life in any capacity, because it seems to be all over the place. In other words, there's another factor there. It's not just self esteem. It's not just self esteem. It has to be grounded in something else. Whereas if you look at the research on self compassion, it is quite clear that when you have high levels of self compassion, you have much higher levels of the things we are talking about in this program. Things like more meaning, more meaning, you are more likely to contribute. You tend to be healthier. You tend to be live, live longer. You tend to have more compassion for others as you have compassion for yourself. And, you know, we often grow up with these kind of, kind of sayings that you have to love yourself in order to love others.
When it actually seems, seems like these old so long, perennial wisdom codes are based on some evolutionary truth that we're now finding in the research to be true. So, you know, um, and in the chapter you mentioned there, I remember I kind of set up this, dichotomy, which sometimes is used, particularly in education, that, you know, should we teach them skills or self esteem?
And in that chapter, I argue that, well, we kind of need self esteem and we kind of need skills, but we also need something other than that. And that's to do with this other dimension, this values dimension that has to do with compassion, whether it's towards self and others. And when we get this third element into it, we suddenly realize that Skills and self esteem in themselves don't denote the kind of human being we want to be in most cases or the kind of world we want to be because you can imagine how you can have all the skills in the world and all the self esteem in the world and you still It's of little contribution to your fellow man over the planet.
You know, there's many dictators past and present that seems to be, have extremely high levels of self esteem and also have skill skills on many levels. But again, those don't seem to have that heart, that compassion, that benevolence. Um, towards others. And in many cases, often we know from psychology not to watch themselves as well, because behind the bravado of extended and extreme self esteem is often very low self esteem.
And once you start, start challenging that, that, that, that inflated balloon, of course, what you often experience is aggression and, um, all sorts of efforts to try and protect that because it's actually not supported by something substantial. So the difference between self esteem and compassion is actually, it lies at the heart of a lot of our problems and challenges in the world, including the challenging of staying healthy and self caring towards ourselves.

Adriana: Yeah, and you really bring out this difference, this one crucial element, which is an element of love. Because it goes back to the title of your chapter, is to love. this compassionate relationship with ourselves and with the others, with others, with the world, this is, this is what gives us, leads us toward having a sense of meaning. But another thing that I really, uh, loved in your article was your discussion of, you giving as a principle of living because you talk about it more than just, you know, having a a to do list where I'm going to go and do such and such for my neighbor. It's a principle of, it's a way of, a way of living.
Can you talk a little about what you mean by that?

Thomas: Yeah. Yes. It's, uh, it's, um, it's interesting that all the major religions and many of the wisdom trade wisdom traditions throughout time at the core of their message. has always been the same message that we're talking about today. Christianity, love thy neighbor. Buddhism, be harmless to all things, even be careful not to step on the ants there under your shoe.
Uh, the Quran, I'm told in the Quran, it's a very central message that love is the quickest route to human perfection. giving is the quickest route to human perfection. And I find it interesting that these major religions and spiritual traditions have basically at heart all said the same thing as what the research is showing now.
And that just to me is a wonderful thing because it shows that we have more in common than separates us. Yes, we have, as human beings, we've certainly perverted religion in all sorts of ways, and we still do that in many, many ways that are detrimental for our own health and community as a, as a global community.
When we start, you know, believing that we are more right than the other person, rather than just acknowledging the fact that at heart of all of these religious traditions is the same message. And then the, the diversity and the differences is much less in many ways, and not something we have to get up in arms about.
And even if you're non religious. Showing that it's a wonderful way we can have common ground on which to proceed. And I often say to my students and to other people that I'm very happy to have these philosophical discussions about, um, about where giving comes from, uh, whether it's in evolutionary trade or it's a, it's a spiritual characteristic of us.
But I think as an educator and as a researcher, I say that that's well and true and good to have these discussions. And I personally find them very fascinating, but in terms of practical, practical going forward, it's even more important to that we actually know how to get, go forward, whether or not we know from whencenthis, this mysterious, to some degree, the mysterious thing comes. I love Buddha, that there's a story of Buddha where he says, if you're hit by an arrow, don't, don't stop and ponder. I wonder from whence that arrow came. Obviously attend to the wound and And, and, uh, in rather than philosophically wonder too much about what, from whence it came, it's not a perfect analogy, but it does illustrate the same concept that we don't know from whence this gift comes of giving.
Um, but we do know in which directions to go, to go with it. And that is probably the more important thing to alleviate the suffering that we all have on different levels. Because I don't think there is an intelligent, aware human being on this planet that don't have some levels of anxiety, because it would be unwise not to.
It's almost like the crisis we have in the natural environment. The political division, the, the social division, the polarity that has come also from social media and being able to be confirmed in your own bias much more now than it was in the past. We have certain problems, problems that are more prominent now, and that needs solutions. So to not be anxious on some level, I think it's putting your head in the sand to some degree. So we have to acknowledge and recognize that, that, uh, that we are all in the same boat to, to, to the same degree. And, and having a principle of giving, I think, takes us not out of anxiety completely, but it takes us, brings us into a healthy state where we do something about it. And that's the coming back to this, this thing about meaning and contributing. That's something around. If we work for solutions, we can handle. We can handle being with a problem and we can handle that there are problems around us. It's almost like the solution comes from within, from our parasympathetic dominance.
And it makes us, it makes us have the, it makes us have, um, I might just quickly share another, now that we mentioned Buddha, there's another book, there's another Buddhist saying that I also love. And, and, and that is, You can't cover the whole world in soft and smooth leather to make your journey soft and smooth, but you can wear leather sandals. And I love it because it's a funny concept, isn't it? Can you imagine? Oh, there's a, there's an angry person. Let me put some soft leather around him or her or them. Uh, or there's a, there's a sharp corner in the world. Let me put some, you would run out of soft leather very quickly. But this idea that in the, in this little space of the universe called Thomas, I can have leather sandals so that at least wherever I'm walking, there's a certain, there's a certain type of equilibrium, even if I'm dealing with a world that hasn't got any equilibrium, I can have that to a certain extent because I have, I have power over my own choices and I have power over my own emotions. I have power over my own thoughts. It's in some ways, it's the only thing I have power over. The only thing I have power over, but it's also the only thing that actually is needed to have this sustainable happiness if circumstances indeed is only a small part of it. And our state of being is the more important contributor to our health and happiness.
So a principle of giving in terms as a principle of life is something that I myself is fascinated about. I'm trying to live every day in many ways, and sometimes it has nothing to do with or word of physical giving. Sometimes it has more to do with being silent and mediative and being within. And sometimes it has to do with active participation and help of others in the world.
But it's almost like it's got less to do with the actual action. and more to do with my state of being. Um, I find, I find, and again, seems to be corroborated with the research.

Adriana: Yeah. And you mentioned in the, in the chapter as well, that as part of that, The Gratitude can be a method of giving.

Thomas: That's an example. Yeah. I think that's an example of how it can be ephemeral, if you like, or it can be non physical because research shows that if, if I just ask you to, let's just together sit for five minutes and think about something we're grateful for, Again, statistically speaking, people will increase their levels.
of parasympathetic dominance, the levels of synchronicity in the body, the levels of happiness and health inside of them. And it doesn't really matter what you think about. Just that's just the emotion of gratitude, which to me in many ways is just a giving emotion, whether it's directed towards others or yourself, it's just a positive emotion. All positive emotions in many ways are giving emotions. So I think the gratitude Research shows in many ways this idea that this idea of giving can be subtle, subtle acts, if you like, of feeling and doesn't have to, have to always be manifest in action. And also interesting, I find it interesting that some psychologists talk about how sometimes, you know, Your non action is the best way to help, you know, and, uh, as a teacher and as a teacher, I remember teachers, uh, students coming up to me and say, isn't this beautiful, Mr. Nelson? And then I remember sometimes knowing the student, I felt the best response was, I think you know yourself. And they go, yeah, I did a lot of effort on this. So, yeah, it's good. Yeah, that's probably what, probably what I would say as well. So, you know, sometimes, sometimes holding back is actually the most giving thing. But again, it illustrates this idea that it, it giving is something to do with wise living, not just this list, as you say, of, I've got to do this.. And so coming back to your, the question you started with, no need to feel anxious about listening to, or talking about the idea of giving, because that buys into old negative fear based beliefs around what we must do and what we should do.
And what perhaps we've inherited from our parents or we inherited from our school, or we inherited from our society or from many generations of. living. We had, it's also a principle of living. By giving is also an invitation to start living in a way where we know ourselves in a very deep and profound way and examine all our beliefs because all our fears are situated in there and they need to be investigated.
We cannot transform what we cannot see. We have to, we have to bring it to the forefront of our consciousness for them to be transformed. And that in itself is a giving thing that you could do to yourself, but you can see it becomes much more complex, much more exciting and much more multifaceted. and much more, uh, existing on many, many, many levels than just giving money to the Salvos or the Salvation Army or something else. So I love that you asked that question because it's so, so important to. realize in order not to be anxious about being told that the giving is really healthy for you because there's so much more to it. There's a wisdom that has to be understood and worked with in order to make this sort of fruitful in your life.

Adriana: Yeah, that's really important. I like how in your list of self care aims you include autonomy because for me personally, I feel like I love to give something that is my idea. You know, it's something that I wanted to do, but if I feel like it's imposed on me from outside, it's harder for me. It doesn't, it doesn't feel like it gives me the same benefits. So I, I like keeping that, that awareness in there that autonomy one thing that can make giving beneficial.

Thomas: We know now that the best leaders, the best CEOs, the best teachers, anyone who has some responsibility, the best parents are the ones who can help their children, their students, their workers, their co workers. Collaborators, whatever it might be, to do what it is that needs doing, but in a way where they feel ownership and agency. So the more, so the more you can sort of feel as if you're not directing them to do this, but this is something that they are, Part of choosing, and there's many ways of doing that. That's why they're the best leaders and best teachers, because it does take wisdom Mm to do that with students. It does take wisdom to do that with your Children. It does take wisdom to do that hmm, in a workplace where you might be the supervisor. You might be the hmm, boss, mm but there's still there's still many. hmm, Mm ways of doing that where you can either feel as if mm hmm, your autonomy is being eroded mm or your autonomy is actually being encouraged. And in business, of course, there, this has also become a philosophy in business because they realize that again, the research shows that businesses that incorporate some of these elements with their workers tend to have more productivity, more creativity. More happiness in that. There's, of course, all other elements of that too that needs to be factored in. Like, you know, you can't work them to death and you have to give them. So it's not all about the outcome. It's not about the product and so on. And, but in fact, in fact, that's also why this principle of giving needs to be taken into all areas of life, including the economy. Because it's interesting how we've been operating by an economy that's not based on research, but a theory that you know, that what is, what is the dominant theory that, you know, everything will adjust itself by according to demands and supply. And we all, we already, we already know that that has failed. You know, the global financial crisis was an example of that. Sometimes people spend more money than they have to spend. Sometimes they spend money, money that's not there to spend unless there is some sort of value, some sort of ethics, some sort of philosophy guiding even our economy. It doesn't make much sense.

Tim Jackson, by the way, if anyone is interested is someone to look at when it comes to almost like a giving. philosophy inside of economy because he says it doesn't take doesn't make much sense to have the economy that we have because we live on a finite, uh, planet with finite resources. Having a constant economic growth is philosophically debunked. Instead he said we should actually think about when is enough enough and how can we make sure that every everyone has something and not someone having, you know, a few percentage of Uh, percentage of people on this planet. old has 40 percent of the wealth on the planet. It's just that makes absolutely no sense, and it can only can only happen inside a philosophy that's very different from this giving philosophy.
I feel so that there's a whole transformation of society that's needed. Um, but I think what we talked about today is certainly at least I can't see how that is not essential for those discussions in order to, to transport us towards a society that has more of that philosophy rather than what is currently giving us many of these challenges that we see.

Adriana: I'm glad you brought that in. That's, really helps us to see the extent of, of the possibilities of living in this way if we can do it as a, as a group. But I, I really appreciate your understanding of this principle. First of all, just to teach us how it benefits us, but then to also help us understand what it is and what it isn't, and how we can do it in a way that actually. is healthy because there is a way to do it in a way that is unhealthy, right? And, and to understand all of the different ways that it can be expressed and manifest. This has just been really, really helpful. It's, it's better than I hoped. I'm, I'm really thankful that you

Thomas: I'm glad. Yeah.

Adriana: to come today and talk to us about this.

Thomas: been my pleasure and it's been a gift to my parasympathetic dominance to be able to help. Yes.

Adriana: Thank you so much.

Thomas: You are welcome.

Special announcement: And just reminding any music lovers, I want to invite you to a concert that I'll be playing with my quartet, the Avery Ensemble, in West Hartford, Connecticut, on Saturday, October 5th. Any of you in the New England area, we'd love to meet you in person. If you want to find out more about the concert, about our ensemble, about buying tickets, go to averyensemble.com.