Synergy IQ: 0:01

Welcome to Creating synergy where we explore what it takes to transform. We are powered by Synergy IQ. Our mission is to help leaders create world class businesses where people are safe, valued, inspired and fulfilled. We can only do this with our amazing community. So thank you for listening.

Daniel Franco: 0:20

Hi there synergizers and welcome back to another episode of The creating synergy podcast. My name is Daniel Franco. And today we have our very first online experience podcast with the world renowned Sue Langley, who is a global speaker, an expert in emotional intelligence, neuroscience, positive psychology and leadership. As CEO of the Langley group and Academic Director of the Langley group Institute, Sue inspires people to apply emotional intelligence positive psychology and neuroscience to achieve the best possible outcomes for themselves and their businesses. Since founding the Langley group in 2002, Sue has the remarkable gift for synthesizing science into simple practical tools to teach and advise 1000s of leaders change agents and human resource professionals on how to harness the brain's potential and use emotions much more intelligently. Sue has chaired conferences and presented her research work internationally and developed large scale projects with organizations such as Salesforce, Schneider Electric Unilever, wh Smiths to cultivate positive culture, and emotional intelligent leadership. I Lawson's master trainer in evidence based emotional intelligence and strengths tools. Sue has earned an industry reputation as an leading advisor in Australia on practical workplace application of emotional intelligence, positive psychology, and neuroscience. She was one of the first people to earn a master's in neuroscience of leadership, a rigorous new research degree and the most in depth credential in this emerging field. Sue is the lead developer and facilitator of Australia's first and only Diploma of positive psychology and well being and partners with the UK center of applied positive psychology to bring innovative strengths based approaches to organizations across the Asia Pacific. She's also a sought after media expert, having been featured as an emotional intelligence expert in the ABC TV series redesigned my brain. She's also a director of well being in Australia and a member of the Student Wellbeing Action Network, and new alliances of researchers, practitioners and educators furthering positive education. In this episode, Sue's shares her journey of 20 years experience from her early career to where she finds herself today as a highly sought after speaker, teacher and consultant. We also dived into topics such as her definition of positive psychology and what it means to flourish, gratitude, mindfulness, psychological well being, how to be present, when we have to plan for the future, the role that happiness plays in our lives, how positive psychology helps with burnout and stress, why we feel guilt and how we can turn it into a positive, the challenges of shame and imposter syndrome, the power of language that we use in self talk, and why we should really take notice. I know you're going to absolutely love this chat. And if you would like to learn more about some of the other great and amazing speakers and leaders that we've had on the creating synergy podcast and be sure to jump onto our website at Synergy.iq.com.au, don't you or check us out at creating synergy podcast on all the podcast outlets. Cheers. So welcome back to a another episode of The creating synergy podcast. My name is Daniel Franco. And today we have the amazing Sue Langley on the show. Welcome to the show, Sue.

Sue Langley: 4:07

Well, thank you. I don't know if I'd call myself amazing, but I'm very happy to be here.

Daniel Franco: 4:12

So I just wanted to point out to you and the listeners. This is our first online experience for doing so you're coming from all the way over in Sydney.

Sue Langley: 4:22

Beautiful Byron Bay,

Daniel Franco: 4:23

Daniel Oh Byron, where they go even better again. I was just up there actually earlier in the year in bar.

Sue Langley: 4:30

It's a beautiful spot I have to say. It's hard

Daniel Franco: 4:33

to argue. So thank you again for your time. You've been you've well you've been described to me as a legend in your own lunchbox. So you're you're you're in the world of positive psychology you are formed a world renowned company called The Langley group which works on positive psychology. How did you become to be the renowned expert that you are today were you doing notes, you know and around the world. Tell us a little bit about your story.

Sue Langley: 5:03

Yeah, sometimes you wonder how that does happen. I think for me, what's really interesting is I probably had a bit of a bit different background for people who start in the consulting business, I hadn't worked for a consulting firm, I hadn't done anything in this sort of space, I just started my own business and kind of thought, I'll wing it and hope for the best. But I think one of the key things is I my strengths really fit with sharing knowledge and facilitating learning, I got very clear on my own personal purpose, vision and values very early on. And I set up my business around that. And one of the things that's really important to me is everything we do at the language group is based on the practical application of emotional intelligence, positive psychology, and neuroscience. And it was really important for me to have that intersection where it's not just about positive Psych and well being, it's also about the science of emotions. It's bringing in the neuroscience. And I did my Master's in neuroscience of leadership. And I wanted to bring those together. And I just wanted to be the best that I could be in that sort of space and share that knowledge. And from that, we've been lucky and hopefully made some good choices around how that's led to us being leaders in this space. I do consider myself very lucky, I get invited to speak at most of the sort of global conferences in this area. And I'm lucky enough to be considered, hopefully a leader in this space now. But it didn't just happen overnight. It was probably a lot of hard work over 20 years, and a lot of learning a lot of experience a lot of interesting conversations along the way.

Daniel Franco: 6:38

So for those who are listening in and really interested in this world, can you tell us a little bit about your path to how you became or how you found yourself in and the ups and downs that you you face along the way?

Sue Langley: 6:51

Yeah, that's a good question. Because it's not necessarily a path I would recommend. And if I look at most people in a consulting space, they have not taken the path that I've taken. So I dropped out of college at 17, I did not go to university, I did not get a psych degree until I was in my 30s. I didn't work for a big coal for consulting firm, I haven't had a big global career in multimillion dollar businesses. So when you think about the usual path in the consulting space, I have probably taken the complete opposite. So I was a long distance lorry driver in Europe as my first role. I, I dropped out of college, and I literally because I love learning, I then proceeded to continue learning I wasn't very good at the whole school formal learning. So I did my psychology a level through open university, I did all sorts of diplomas in travel and transport, marketing, all sorts of things, because I loved learning. And then I sort of found out about a particular course due to a gorgeous member of my family who introduced me to this idea of sort of more personal professional development that they've done through their organization. And I managed to get on it for free, because I had no money at the time, which was a miracle by itself. And then they asked me if I do the facilitator training. And that was interesting. It didn't go anywhere. But it was probably my first opportunity to really get clear on my purpose, vision and values. And that was back in 97. Really getting clear on what my personal purpose, vision and values were. And then, I suppose because I hadn't taken the traditional route, when I came to Australia, I set up my own business. And as I said, at that point, I didn't have a degree, but probably had maybe some more confidence. And I thought, if I do a good job, then I'll get more work. That was really my premise. If I do a good job, then hopefully people will see I'm good at what I do. And, you know, they'll give me what work and thankfully, it

Daniel Franco: 8:51

was a pretty good rule for life.

Sue Langley: 8:53

Well, there was kind of how I thought that I haven't got any context. I mean, we'd moved to Australia, I didn't know anybody. I didn't have experience, etc. But I put myself out there I put my hand up to speak at conferences, people thankfully loved my style, the science behind it type element. And yeah, it's kind of grown from there. So I wouldn't necessarily recommend people do my very roundabout way. I'm sure there are more direct versions, but I believe everything I've done, including being a lorry driver 18 have led me to be able to do what I do now.

Daniel Franco: 9:30

Yeah, it all adds to the experience, doesn't it? Did you wouldn't mind just you giving us your definition on what positive psychology is?

Sue Langley: 9:42

Yeah, really positive psychology is the scientific study of human flourishing. If you think basically about what it is. People often see it as being like, personal development. You know, you're happy clappy sometimes people will say, Oh, it's NLP. It's not positive psychology is the scientific study. of human flourishing. And really what that means when we think about human flourishing is individuals, teams, organizations community. So if you look at the whole scientific field of positive psychology right now, there is research done around the individual individual well being mental health, etc. There's research done around what they call positive organizational Scholarship, which is sort of teams and organizations. And then there's so much being done in communities and countries and governments around policies, etc. So it's a fabulous area to be in.

Daniel Franco: 10:33

Absolutely. So when you talk flourish, let's deep dive into the word flourish. What do we what do we actually meaning? Is it the flourishing business in family in life in money? What are we all the above?

Sue Langley: 10:49

Yeah, all the above, really? So if you look at what, what the science researches or what sort of is covered, it'll be anything where things are going well, so it could be, who are the people that have the most amazing, long standing relationships? And what are they doing? Who are the teams that are performing at their best and getting the best outcomes and having high levels of well being? And what are they doing? Which are the countries that are flourishing and seem to be working well, and what are they doing? So, but some people do get the wrong impression of flourishing, especially since the concept of flourishing and languishing has been more in the media. So back in, I don't know, 2012 was a really amazing paper on languishing, flourishing, but nobody read that one. So now in the 2021, we're all going on flourishing languishing. But it's been around for a while and the positive side space. But when we think about that flourishing doesn't mean you're always happy. And that's, I think, where people perhaps mistake positive psychology is about being happy ology and that sort of thing. Flourishing means tough stuff happens, and I deal with it. Good stuff happens, and I leverage it, and I hang on to it. Adversity hits me and I get myself back up, and I use my strategies to make the most of it COVID hits your business turns on its head inside out, you use positive psychology, to flip what you need to do, and to still stay flourishing. So flourishing doesn't mean bad stuff doesn't happen. It doesn't mean you don't feel angry, or anxious or sad, or whatever it is. But flourishing means you've got tools in your toolkit to be able to handle those things. languishing, is when adversity, if you like is much more than we've perhaps got the tools to handle and we end up then perhaps not being able to cope with the adversity or those challenging emotions along the way.

Daniel Franco: 12:36

That is, it 15 different questions that came into my mind, I do want to just touch on the happiness I have seen, you've done a few keynotes in the happiness space. And you said that flourishing doesn't mean happiness. But it means about, from what I heard there, and correct me if I'm wrong, it means about having everything else in order and being and being able to have that growth mindset almost of being able to really see through situations and not not feel like your backs against the wall. But look, look at it look optimistically at it.

Sue Langley: 13:06

Yeah, and if you think about some of the strategies and tools for a flourishing life, or for high levels of Well, being a growth mindset is one, learned optimism is one. And there are about 200 others that we could draw on. And this is the thing that I really love is for an individual to flourish or a team to flourish, there are some key themes we know are important. But the actions or the strategies that you take might be different to the ones I take, you might love practicing your growth mindset, I might love practicing gratitude, you might be really awesome at kindness, I might actually be really good at learned optimism and flipping my thinking. And all of them could work for us. It's just about having lots and lots of tools. So we can increase the duration of our UPS, whether it's us as an individual or as a team organization, and reduce the duration and intensity of our downs. It's not about never having the downs. It's about we've got the skills to get through them quicker.

Daniel Franco: 14:04

No, that's amazing. Do you is there in your opinion, you know, if you if you're saying there's 200 Or no, it was a throwaway number. But is there one or two in particular which are proven to be or help the idea of flourish? More often than not? Yeah, it's

Sue Langley: 14:23

a good one. Daniel, I have to say everybody asked me what's your three tips and I always give you three tips.

Daniel Franco: 14:28

So I got three tips with 1000. Other recommendations? Exactly.

Sue Langley: 14:33

So I think my most important comment is is known in the in the researchers person activity fit. Be careful of it's a bit like an Oh, watch the saying beware the carpenter that only carries a hammer or something. I don't know. Everything looks like a nail. And it's a bit like that with positive psychology is there are lots and lots of tools and techniques. So yes, we've got some amazing research around the power of gratitude as an elevating emotion. It connects us here. elevates us. And it changes our perspective, it has an amazing opportunity to do stuff. So gratitude is great. Mindfulness is fantastic lots and lots of research that tells us mindfulness improves our sleep, our mental clarity, our resilience, our vagal tone, our prefrontal cortex and connections in there, and all sorts of things. And so there's lots and lots of research around various things. But the thing I always like to sort of caution around is, again, that person activity fit. And I'm going to use mindfulness as an example. Many people have now started to practice mindfulness. There's lots of books, there's lots of amazing courses and things on mindfulness. And it's a great tool. And it's one tool on the smorgasbord of strategies we can use. But what's really important to understand is, if you take 1000 studies on mindfulness, you will probably find about 650 of them that are telling you mindfulness will improve things. So control group, experiential group, experimental group, Whoo, yeah, experimental group has improvements, you'll probably find about 348, that will say, it makes no difference at all between the two groups. And you'll probably find two that will tell you it actually can have a negative impact, very small amount of cases. So again, this is what I always say is there are many strategies like some of the ones I've mentioned, savoring the physiology of emotions, gratitude, kindness, strengths, all of those sorts of things, amazing tools. Mindfulness is one, but we know that it may not work for all people all of the time, in all situations. So it's about finding what works for us.

Daniel Franco: 16:32

Well, I think that poses a really good question. And one question I was really keen to sort of draw out of today is and get your get your understanding and advice almost on this is, if we're talking about mindfulness, and we're often talked about, you know, one thing things that we really hear quite often is, you know, mindfulness will help you is critical in your well being right being present in the moment. So we talked about past, present, and future. And these type of conversations, I hear so many things mindfulness being present, that'll really attribute to the quality of your well being. But then in the same breath, we're told, we need to plan we need to go set, we need to action on those goals. So we now need to think to the future right to be successful or flourish or, or any other adjective that we can we can come up with. And then further to this, we also need to be grateful. So we need to look back in the past, and be grateful for some of those wins and losses and learn from them. So I feel like there's so many strategies in how to flourish with that past present future mindset in the in mind, is there a percentage in your study that works best? Like is it 3333? Is it 4040 20? Like, is there a way? Or is there a formula? Or is every single situation different?

Sue Langley: 18:00

Yeah, look, I think that's an interesting one. And every single situation may not be different. So whilst we all have individual differences, if we think of some basic premises, around well being Eat, sleep, and exercise is pretty much going to be the same for everybody. You know, we need to eat well, we need to sleep well, we need to exercise. So there are some sort of basic themes that we know are pretty critical for wellbeing. Your question about past present future is a really interesting one. And again, there's some great research on this as part of positive psychology, and it's called the psychology of time. And it's about where we spend our time, emotionally, if you like, or in our head. So if you think about those three concepts that you mentioned, gratitude can be done for the past, it can be done in the present. I'm grateful for sitting here right now having a conversation with you. That's true. But equally to your point, I can be grateful about something that happened in my past that made me the person I am, whatever happens great. So different activities could cut across time, I could do a random act of kindness now in the present, and then I could reminisce about it later. And then also potentially before I did it, maybe I anticipated it and thought about it and all that would be great to do. And that can then influence me on different occasions. So I plan for Think about a holiday. Not that we know what they're like perhaps at the moment.

Daniel Franco: 19:19

We run our own business, those things don't.

Sue Langley: 19:22

Well, if you think about holidays, in theory, holidays cut across this sort of past, present future. So there's the anticipation when I haven't been on holiday, and I'm planning for it and oh, I can't wait to go back to Italy. And sippin Aperol Spritz in the square and blah, blah, blah, whatever it is, then hopefully I enjoy my holiday when I'm there and I'm present and I'm being mindful and focused and noticing not worried about work. And then of course, after the holidays over I've got my photos and I share it with people and I reminisce so we know the past, present and future are really important. And this is where we've got to be careful that we don't get too caught up on the mindfulness aspect of being present. Always in the moment, because if you focus only on the present, you will not plan for the future. You'll focus on what's happening right here right now. And you might not think you know what if I do this right here, right now, it's going to get in the way of something I want in the future. So if you look at the research on the psychology of time, it suggests we do need a percentage, and it doesn't necessarily give you specific stats, or third, a third, a third, but it does say, there are certain times in your life you absolutely need to be present, like right here, right now I need to be present to this conversation. It's no good me worrying about what happened yesterday or anticipating the future, because I'm here right now. And I will be the best version that I can be, and you will be the best version that you can be if we are present. Absolutely. So that's really important. However, what they call past positive is equally as important. So past positive is when I think about my past, am I thinking about it with gratitude with that reminiscence that like, wow, that was amazing. And I celebrate, or am I potentially ruminating of a couple of I did that I stuffed that up that didn't go well. So how we think about the past is actually more important than necessarily the percentage of time if you then think about the future is kind of the same. If we don't spend time thinking about the future and planning, you wouldn't have a business right now, you probably wouldn't have a relationship right now, if you didn't think about, Oh, I get to see that person again next week or something? Absolutely. So future is important. And again, how you think about that future is important. So if I am thinking about the future of Oh, my God, what's going to happen after COVID? What's this going to mean? How was it gonna impact my business on what am I going to do? That's not very well being oriented, and it's probably not going to help me. But if I think about the future of okay, when things open up again, what's that going to mean? How is that kind of work? What do we do? Well, how do we keep doing what we do? Well, etc, etc. That is then going to pull me towards that possible future in a positive way?

Daniel Franco: 21:59

Yeah, yeah. So so what I'm hearing out of that is, we really need to be conscious of all three, to be able to, to flourish in life.

Sue Langley: 22:12

Yeah, absolutely. And again, how you approach it. So for me personally, if I were to put a percentage, I'd probably go roughly sort of 50% present, maybe 25% 25%. If you were to sort of play it out, yeah. Because on your day to day, if you're in a leadership role, and you're not present, when one of your team comes to talk to you, because you're worried about the past or the future, that's probably not ideal with your kids. If you're constantly thinking about work tomorrow, and you're not actually present with your kids, not ideal. So present is probably our biggest chunk. But equally in a business perspective, if we didn't think about the future with your kids, if you didn't think about, I know, let me give you an example. Let's imagine that you're somebody who's not overly healthy. And then you think about your kids and you go, I want to be able to run around after my kids and go to their wedding and meet my grandchildren and whatever you you're probably going to pull towards doing something about your physical health. If you never thought about the future, you just indulged in you want every day and we'd all probably not be quite so yeah.

Daniel Franco: 23:10

Yeah, absolutely. Let's jump back into the happiness element, which we which was where we went down a little rabbit hole there, which was, which is fantastic. So the happiness aspect of flourishing and positive psychology. How does it How does happiness intertwine into all that? Yeah, it's

Sue Langley: 23:34

kind of an interesting one. And I appreciate sometimes I might have a slightly different view to others, because I do also come at it from the science of emotions. So if you come at it from the science of emotions, happiness is an emotion. It happens. I buy you a present, and you go, Oh, that makes me so happy. Great. That's an emotion. It's

Daniel Franco: 23:53

fleeting. It's fleeting. Yeah. Yeah.

Sue Langley: 23:55

So how it fits in the positive psychology spectrum is sometimes it gets the overarching oh, we're studying happiness. But actually, what we're not, we're not doing that what we're studying, potentially is, and again, there's two key components that you could break it down to more but there's two key components in positive psychology. One is what we often think of as subjective well being, which is, Am I happy if you're like, Am I satisfied with my life? am I experiencing more positive emotion to negative emotion on an average day week, etc. So that's the sort of subjective well being is sometimes called the pleasurable life. It's Can I have my ice cream and drink my beer? You know, do I enjoy those sorts of certain things? But then we've got which again, there's different researchers playing in this space around psychological well being and psychological. Well, Pete wellbeing is often what you might think of as the deeper elements. And it's really about things like purpose in life, that sense of meaning and contribution, that sense of mattering and making a difference the positive relationships that are Goal, achievement and accomplishment we feel when we strive for something. It's things like your ability to have autonomy over your environment and feel yourself as syntax, self actualization, those sorts of things. So if you think about when people talk about happiness, strictly speaking, happy is just an emotion, it's fleeting. But if we bring it back into the positive psychology world, it's really more about the subjective well being. Now just on that, though, it doesn't mean to say that the psychological well being can't make you happy, because we know those two are intertwined. And if I give you an example, we'll take a couple of examples. So if we think about, you have a bad day. So your day has had lots of negative emotion, you've had some tough conversations, you felt stressed and overwhelmed and you've had a lot going on and you've in general, experience more negative emotions to positive emotions, you can still get to the end of the day. Check in with your meaning, your contribution, what matters to you, they're sort of making a difference element and you go you go, do you know what actually made a difference? Today was a tough day, but I made a difference today. That can then make you happier so you feel more positive. Equally you can have the most pleasurable day Imagine you've I don't know you've been sipping mai Tai's in a, you know, plunge pool somewhere on that holiday that we'll want to get to have. We've had a really happy, pleasurable, joyful day we've I don't know gone paddleboarding or done a hike whatever you and we get to the end of the day, and we go what was a nice day, but it wasn't overly meaningful. I didn't achieve much we kind of need both of those in life, we've got to make sure we don't skimp on the good stuff now and again, otherwise, we've never experienced positive emotions. And we've got to make sure probably we've got something a little bit deeper, richer, that matters that's meaningful, perhaps to build that on.

Daniel Franco: 26:55

Oh, I love it. When we got the movie just on the movie, the pursuit of happiness. In the actual title of itself is always one that's grappled have grappled with, and I think you've just confirmed that why because you know, happiness is fleeting to pursue a fleeting moment where I think that they got the title of that book rocks, anyone movie wrong. I want to talk about we've had previously in two or three weeks ago, we had a, a another podcast, a stress scientist by the name of Chris Wilson on the show. And we talked about burnout and stress in particular, and the effects that burnout has on the body. And, you know, the signs to look out for what we didn't discuss was how potentially positive psychology could prevent the the idea of burnout. Is that possible? Is that just thinking positively about something? There's that okay, sinuous cure, or have I worded that wrong?

Sue Langley: 28:05

Yeah, you I'm definitely going to correct you on your word. Positive Psychology help with burnout? Absolutely. Can positive thinking by itself happy? I don't know. That's a poll. Yeah, personal development. Positive thinking by itself is not going to solve all your problems. However, it is a tool and a strategy, we would call it either cognitive reappraisal, or learned optimism in the pot sight space. But it is absolutely being able to flip your thinking. And that might be one strategy that you use. But I think your answer to your question, we've got some answers around this that's come out of the positive psychology space about stress. So if you think about stress, and we may not have time to get into all the chemical aspects now, and I'm sure you've covered this is when we experience stress, we flood our body with adrenaline and cortisol, there are impacts of what cortisol does, it suppresses our immune system, it suppresses our digestion, all sorts of different things that can have as an impact on us. But at the same time, when we experience stress, there are other things that happen. And here's an interesting study that has come out of positive site by an amazing researcher. And there's a book called upside of stress. But the researchers name is Alia Crum. And she's brilliant in this space. And what she did is she asked a whole bunch of people a couple of simple questions about stress. How do you view stress? Is it helpful and should be embraced, utilize and encouraged if you like? Or is it harmful and should be avoided at all costs? So she asked some simple questions about how people view stress, and then she followed them for a year. What was really interesting is the people who viewed stress as positive actually had fewer illnesses, fewer accidents, lower mortality rate and lower stress levels as in what they reported, even though they'd had stressful things happen to them. The people who viewed stress as harmful had increased mortality rate increase accidents, increased illnesses. etc. So she spends a lot of her time lay cram looking at how our mindset and our view and our perception actually changes outcomes. She did a brilliant study with, or she was involved in a study, I think levy was the main, the leader calm and the first time 660 People asked their view of ageing 23 and a half years later, if you were in the group that had a positive view of aging, you were on average going to live nine years longer than those that had a negative year well. So we've got studies that will show say that stress actually can be valuable to us. And if you think about the word stress, we've used the word stress to actually mean distress. We've forgotten the word use stress, which is good stress. Yeah. And how you view stress will change things. And there's one more thing which I think is amazing about this, and people may or may not know, lazy, imagine I have a positive view of stress. When stressful things happen, whether it's COVID, or shutdowns or changes in your business, or changes in your role, or illnesses or whatever, you when you have a stress response, we will all tend to produce cortisol unless we have a neurological disorder, we will produce cortisol. Absolutely. But what's really interesting is there's this really cool chemical called DHEA. If you have a negative view of stress, you only produce a little bit of DHEA. If you have a positive view of stress, you produce a whole lot more of this DHEA. Now people say to me, Well, who cares? So what if I produce more or less? Yes, it's important. DHEA is a really cool chemical that is involved in learning and memory. Well, guess what, if I have a stressful event, and I produce more DHEA, I'm going to learn from my stressful event, I'm going to lay down your memory so that when the next stressful event comes, I've nailed it, I'm prepared. If you have a negative view of stress, and you've only produced a little, you've learned nothing, and the next stressful event hits you just as hard as the first one. It's awesome.

Daniel Franco: 32:01

It's the old Einstein quote, you can't keep banging your head against the wall and expecting different results, isn't it? It's about being prepared for the next time. Yeah, aggression comes around again,

Sue Langley: 32:10

the thing that I love, I suppose is that we've got this science that tells us there are chemical changes in the body, and that the way that we view things can actually lead to different outcomes. So I just think that's quite amazing.

Daniel Franco: 32:25

It is it's amazing study. And for those who I think this will go into the next question quite nicely is for those who are able to think that way, is positive? Is there? Is this type of thinking or learning, I should say the positive psychology? Is that a learned thing? Or is are we born with it? How does it? How do we come about it? Is it is it we're very lucky, and we stumbled upon a great mentor or, you know, like yourself, you were put into a course quite early on and you're able to question and and look at your life philosophically. How do we stumble across this? In our lives?

Sue Langley: 33:08

Yeah, I think that's an interesting one. And I suppose my view is, anybody can learn anything. So there might be physiological constraints, I don't know, let's say I want to be the world's next long distance ultra marathon runner and I want to beat your same bowl, there are some physiological or physical elements that is probably not going to make that happen. So I'm, I am in no way going to do a whole, you know, happy, happy guru of saying anybody can be anything, because I think that's just a little. Yeah. So there are going to be some constraints. However, when it comes to the positive psychology element, there are an awful lot of things that is about learning. Can you learn how to handle your emotions more effectively? There's 70 years worth of research into the whole physiology of emotions. And guess what, if you learned some of that, you can use your physiology to change how you feel almost instantly the more you practice it, the quicker it gets. If you think about the research into mindfulness, yes, over the last 20 years, we've got lots in the Western world, but we've got two and a half, 1000 years worth of research. If we learn that then we can try it, we can test it. And I have a saying which is treat yourself as a scientific experiment. And for me, what I do is I try and take the science, I practice it, I use it on myself and go, Okay, did this work? Does it support me? Does it help me? Now I'm not saying I never get things wrong. I stuff up same as everybody else does. I have my not so good days. But I'll tell you what, I have way more good days than I have bad days. And I get through things quicker than most people. I remember somebody said to me fairly recently that I was I was devastated. I think it was about a year or so ago. We'd had two cats for 18 years. And one of them all of a sudden we had to have her put down and I was gutted and I was crying I never thought I'd be hit so hard. But as soon as we had to put down I cried all the way home, I was really teary, really upset. And then of course, what did I do, I put my strategies in place. I wrote in my journal, I captured all the thoughts about how amazing she'd been and what she'd added to our lives and the houses she'd been to with us. And all of these sorts of things, looked at a couple of photos, did a mindfulness for 15 minutes on honoring grief, and I'm kind of done. And I remember my sister saying to me, at two o'clock on Sunday afternoon I spoke to and she said, How are you over this already, I'm like, done my strategies, I'm good. And it's not I haven't thought about my purse again, since or whatever. Yeah, this is a small thing. It could be human as well, my mother in law passed away last year around a similar time as my second cat. And again, I put strategies in place. So even though I couldn't be back in the UK, I could get through it genuinely through it. I'm not talking about hiding it genuinely through it quickly. And so for me, that's what this is about. If I want to get back to flourishing, what strategies have I got in a business world, we transformed our business in a matter of weeks, to an even more flourishing business than it was before? After COVID hit. So many other organizations in our same situation, have seriously struggled, we literally flipped us by using positive psychology in every question, every action that we did, it's awesome.

Daniel Franco: 36:20

Amazing. I'm really interested in the guilt that comes with getting over things quickly, right? If you if we talk about, you know, moving on from from your cat, and I know your sister quite well, when Janet says to you, you know, how are you over this so quickly? That there are people who might look at that situation and say, well, I should be Ah, good. I, yeah, I should be feeling this right now. So therefore, I can't be over this. I can't move on. Because I should. And I know the word should, should never be used. Even though I just use it. But and I know a little bit to say on this. Can you explain about the the self talk that comes with what we believe we should be doing?

Sue Langley: 37:15

Yeah, so the word should is an interesting one, as you say, because it often creates guilt, I should still be, you know, I don't know, somebody you love your your one of your parents has passed away, and you're not grieving and crying, and somebody thinks you should be because they were for three months afterwards. It doesn't mean to say you didn't love your parents or whatever. It just means maybe. And again, there's a difference between hiding it and pretending I'm not talking about that I'm talking about genuinely dealing with it. The challenge with us is sometimes we do comparisons, we compare ourselves to others. And we go, Oh, God, my friend was still devastated a year later, what's wrong with me? Am I a bad person, etc. And that's when we can then layer on other emotions that probably don't need to be there. What's really interesting about the word should it does usually lead to guilt. That's a common occurrence, I should bring my mother more often I feel guilty. Now, that's really useful

Daniel Franco: 38:08

should. So that's probably listening to this right now.

Sue Langley: 38:12

feel guilt is actually a good emotion. It's a useful emotion. So if you think about emotions, and I say this all the time, because sometimes people don't think about emotions in this way. Emotions are data, they're information, they're trying to tell you something. So think about emotions in that way. That's all they are their data, their information, they're trying to tell you something. So if we think about guilt, we feel guilt. It's an emotion, it's data, it's trying to tell me something. Okay, what's you're trying to tell me? Well, I feel guilty because I didn't bring my mother. Oh, okay, pick up the phone. So guilt is actually a really valuable emotion, because it propels us to do something. And guilt can be brilliant. Because guilt often leads to action. The challenge for us in one of the more difficult emotions is when the guilt turns to shame. So if I use this same example, and I sit there, and I think, Oh, I'm so bad, I haven't run my mother. And then I go, I'm the worst daughter in the world, I am so terrible, I really should ring my mother more often, oh, my god, I'm so bad, my friends from their mother all the time. I'm such a bad person. As soon as I do that, and I flip it inwards, I experienced shame. And ironically, with shame, I am less likely to pick up the phone, I'm less likely to be propelled to act. This is why guilt is good guilt.

Daniel Franco: 39:27

With this the shame that you experienced as a start, does it provide the negative self talk? So you start identifying as a bad daughter, for example, therefore, because I am a bad daughter, I am not going to call my mother is that

Sue Langley: 39:43

absolutely. We start being it's about me rather than the action and think about I mean, you would see this in the work that you do with leaders in organizations. And we sometimes it's called in the sort of the trade press things like imposter syndrome. Absolutely. But what that is, is I've internalized I'm going to get found out, I'm really not good at this, people are going to notice me one day, and we've internalized it. So we've got the shame of like, if I hide it long enough, nobody will notice. Yeah. Whereas if we can propel that to another emotion as in, I don't know, I feel guilty because I didn't handle a particular conversation with one of my direct reports very well, awesome, great, go learn something about how to do it better. So guilt can be really useful shame can be challenging.

Daniel Franco: 40:28

I should just touch on the imposter syndrome. Really quickly. It is something that I I grapple with more so not because I'm internally, shaming myself. I think it's more about I'm just so I'm so shocked that people like yourself, or, or whoever it might be, may want to actually spend time with me like, I think, I don't actually have anything really great to offer. But it's amazing that I get to hang around some some really fantastic people who've done some amazing things in their life. And I think that's when something someone like me, imposter syndrome comes along. It's like, why am I so lucky to be in this space? I'm nowhere near I'm sharing the stage with some of these people, I'm nowhere near or have achieved nowhere near what that it's not that I look at myself as below them. I almost look at it as like, you know, everyone who's listening in doesn't really, really see what they're getting.

Sue Langley: 41:33

That's an interesting one, again, Daniel, because it's a perfect example of how positive psychology can help us. So let's imagine you're sitting there and going on can't believe I get to have all these people on and on. So how is this happening? And if you start to internalize that, and you feel less than and you do start to feel like you're inferior, and you're probably not going to come across as quite as confident you're not going to be prepared with your questions, etc. But to your point, you actually had already started to flip it and say, I'm lucky, I'm grateful. And also, if you then think, well, what do I learn from each of these people? Because I'm assuming as you're asking these questions, you've done your homework, you want to learn stuff, you're listening, you're picking up on things, you're being curious, that's then pulling you towards the future. And the thing that I love about this is the whole strengths based approach. Sometimes people think that if you're more confident, or you're leveraging your strengths every day, and you get to do all this great stuff, then it's kind of arrogance. And yeah, actually, positive psychology is usually about how do I continue to grow and be curious, it doesn't have to come with a I think I'm better. And I think I'm amazing, and I never have imposter syndrome. But it is about am I approaching every situation with what do I learn? What can I grow? Oh, my goodness, I'm grateful, not, oh, how on earth? Did they allow this to happen? You know, so it's again, the the mindset, the view, the emotion that we bring to that particular situation?

Daniel Franco: 42:54

I love it. If there is anything that I am, it is curious. Right? And I think really, that's where this whole idea of the podcast started was because in what other forum, can you pick some of the most amazing brains, right? Where you get to learn and pick up on some of their ideas and experiences and learnings. I really want to touch on the Curiosity piece within this. Do you believe that curiosity is one piece of the puzzle that creates positive psychology? Or is it a core piece of the puzzle?

Sue Langley: 43:29

Love? Because I think there's so many core pieces, I'm just going to call it a piece because there is absolutely so many pieces. If you look at the jigsaw puzzle of positive psychology, when we do our diploma of sight usually on unit one, we blow people's minds with a mind map with everything included and curiosity is one piece, and there's so many others. Do I think curiosity is a really valuable piece and a valuable strategy? Absolutely. And there's several reasons why. So if you think about curiosity, being curious, there is an emotion behind it. So we know Curiosity is an emotion. And as an emotion, the research has shown us that curiosity can be an antidote for anxiety, for instance, so I feel anxious, I get curious, it takes me out of my own head. And that can help calm my anxiety. So it's good from an emotional perspective. We know from a neuroscience perspective, Curiosity is really powerful because it opens us when I'm curious, and I ask a question, I'm literally opening myself to possibilities. I'm allowing new neurons to connect, as opposed to if I'm more critiquing have we tried that before? We tried that last year, it doesn't work, etc, it shuts us down. So curiosity is good. From an emotion perspective. It's good from a brain science perspective, if you like. We also know Curiosity is a strength. So if you look at some of the strengths tools out there, we use the strengths profile, probably one of the best tools on the market at the moment, and curiosity is a strength. So if I've got that strength of curiosity, I can use that strength sometimes even when I've got a really challenging situation. I'm about to go and see a new client that I find intimidating and I'm nervous about curiosity might be my strength I draw on that I think, right during this meeting, I'm going to be curious, I'm going to ask lots of really cool questions and find out as much as I can. What that does is that using that strength of curiosity, and then comes down any nerves that I might have had, because I am there to be curious, I'm not there to win the work or, you know, to make an impression. I'm there to be curious. So again, we know that curiosity, if you've got it as a top strength is a brilliant tool for supporting yourself not just day to day, but in those tougher situations that you're perhaps not always looking forward to.

Daniel Franco: 45:40

Why do you think that people lose their curiosity? Is it is it? Is it because of the childhood upbringing? You know, parents always saying no, because I have this, I have this theory that all children are born scientists, right? They are born with the idea to be curious, they are all born with the idea to put their finger in the PowerPoint. And just try things and and then we get told from a very young age, you know, no, don't stop or drop that. As opposed to, you know, being allowed to explore, obviously, there's a fine line with staying alive. But eating dirt isn't so much of an issue. Yes. What some parenting people who are parents might want forced upon their kids.

Sue Langley: 46:32

Yeah, it's an interesting one, actually, because there's an anthropologist and her name is escaped me, who spent time studying parenting styles in different parts of the world. And I know she looked at sort of different countries from a Western perspective. And then she went to a couple of different tribes that lived in the Amazon rainforest, and around there that didn't really interact with more sort of Western society, etc. And what was really interesting, I think, she says, are like in Western society, the average one year old has heard the word no 140,000 times. And yet this one particular tribe she spoke about, they live literally on the edge of an escarpment cliff down to a river. And there were fires every day, they had campfires. And yet, no parent ever said to the child, no, no, no when they got to the cliff, but no child fell off. And this is the interesting thing. So I think there's an element of that. But actually, it also links to neuroscience. So if you look at a young child's brain, a baby's brain, when we're first born, structurally, our sort of limbic system is, you know, structurally there, it's going to change a lot. prefrontal cortex is going to change a lot. But the structure of our limbic system is there. As we sort of grow. By the time we get to four or five, anybody who's got a child will probably know, it's every question like, why why is the sky blue? Why are we going here? What are we doing this? Why do I have to put my shoes on? It's question question question. Because lots and lots of neurons are growing at that point in time, literally, you have way more neurons as child than you do as an adult. Because at certain points, you have this huge growth of new neurons. And if you think about how that links to school at school, you learn all sorts of things you learn, I don't know maths, Japanese, you learn geography history, you learn sports, you learn. I don't know, whatever you learn 101 different topics. But gradually, as you go through school, you narrow, you narrow down what you're interested in until eventually you go and quite an at uni, and you go and do accounting or something. Yeah. So you've narrowed, but it's a bit like that with your brain as well. So what your brain does, particularly sort of through puberty, is it prunes itself, and it gets rid of certain connections that it thinks I don't think I'll be needing that probably algebra in my case. But it also then strengthens other ones. So to answer your question about curiosity, we can get less curious for many reasons. One of those is because potentially we've got less that we're interested in. So our brain tends to narrow to focus on what we are interested in. But the other thing that can happen is, as we start to know more, we start to think we know more. So we keep going down the same pathways, and therefore we get less curious because I don't know again, you've been in a leadership role for 10 years or something, and a member of your team comes to you with a problem in your brain goes, Yep, I've heard this 200 times before I know what to do. And you run down the same neural pathway. Curiosity is a way of going, is this exactly the same as the same problem I've seen 200 times before, let me just have a poke around this for a moment. And the thing that I love is, once upon a time, we believed when you got to sort of mid 20s, your gray matter was kind of at its peak, and it was downhill from there. And I know that's what I learned growing up that you know, after that age, it was all kind of, you know, tough luck sort of thing. But we now know that's not true. You know, apparently the oldest person growing a new neuron recorded is 92 years old. So I think that's pretty cool. I want to be curious, yeah, do a PhD in your 80s and be curious about the world.

Daniel Franco: 50:00

That is very, very exciting. We going back to the puzzle piece, you have been quoted in saying that long term Happiness doesn't come from you finding happiness. But from you putting the little pieces of the puzzle together each day, I want to ask, you need to know what puzzle you're assembling had to work?

Sue Langley: 50:24

No, necessarily, actually, that's a really good question, donor links back to your comment you made earlier about the pursuit of happiness. And what's really interesting, and if you look at the American Constitution, it's got the right to pursue happiness. So maybe that's where the title comes from. Yeah. But we know that if you try and pursue happiness, you're actually less likely to find it. And there's some wonderful research around this is people who pursue happiness as in, they think they're going to be happy at all costs, and happiness is highly valuable, etc, they tend to be less happy, because they don't value the negative emotions and the learning, etc. So pursuing happiness, we know does not work. However, it's a bit like in nature, if I run around, actually, I'll give you an example. This, I remember this happening. We were at the Europa clearing in the Blue Mountains when we first sort of moved out here. And my husband used to want to get photos of the Wallabies that would be floating around. And of course, he'd go traipsing off after them, and they'd all run away. So he was pursuing them, and then you'd get close, and they'd run off and whatever. But we took two friends up there. And one gentleman Russell, he is, is very much more patient. And whenever you does it ultramarathons and things, so he's probably got a lot more patients. He just happened to wander off, lay down in the grass. And within minutes, there was a little Wallaby literally, within a foot of him. And I remember David saying, how did that happen? How did he get so close? And it's like, cuz he's laying there allowing it to come to Him. And it's kind of a bit like that, when we think about these sort of puzzle pieces. We know there are lots of puzzle pieces we can put in place. If we keep striving, striving and striving and we've got to find happiness, got to find happiness, try this, try this, try this, it's actually probably not going to work. But if we take a bunch of puzzle pieces, and every single day, we do certain things. And this could be different things for different people. And I'm happy to share some of mine. But you do certain things that you know are conducive to your well being they prioritize positivity in your life, they look after you, what you'll find is you do those every day. And it's a bit like the warm up then coming up to you. It's like, oh, look, I feel happier. Oh, look, my well beings increased, because you're doing the little things every day that are allowing happiness or flourishing to occur.

Daniel Franco: 52:36

Is that what they call habit? Stacking? Is that essentially what you're saying?

Sue Langley: 52:40

Well, a little bit. Yeah. So habit, stacking can mean many things. And I love the whole science of habit. So sort of been teaching that sort of stuff for years. And there's some great books now that are out on habits. And it can be that absolutely. So if you think about what we know about well being, let's take the basics of eat, sleep and exercise, eating a good diet, getting good night's sleep, doing exercise are really important for wellbeing, not about whether you want to be skinny, or have bigger muscles, or whatever you want to do. But your brain needs you to move roughly 30 minutes a day. And your brain needs certain chemicals that come from certain foods. So depending what you eat, it will absolutely impact how you feel. Getting a good night's sleep. When you're asleep, your brain cleans itself. If you don't get deep sleep, your brain doesn't clean itself, wellbeing is off, cognitive decline, all sorts of things. So we know these things are important. So when you think about habit stacking, I could stack habits in the morning that go okay, I'm going to go to bed at a certain time so that in the morning, I can wake up at a certain time, I can have my warm lemon water, I can go on my walk and get my exercise, do my run on the beach, whatever you I come back, I have my green drink, I have my breakfast sitting outside in the sunshine, or do for 10 laps in the pool or whatever it happens to be. And I do all those things. And I know I've already set myself up for success for the day. Because I've stacked a whole bunch of habits that are no good for my well being. However, you might also have a day that doesn't have as many rituals and routines in it that then make it harder during the day because stuff happens. So wellbeing can still occur when you suddenly find yourself with 10 minutes. What are you doing in that? 10 minutes? So you try to power through three more emails? Or are you going to go and stand in the sunshine and do 25 star jumps? Are you going to go and hug somebody? I did this the other day. I'm forever doing facilitation. I love it. And two days ago I was doing a session and I said to everybody okay, 10 minute break. And during this break, I would like you to do something that you know will boost your well being you got 10 minutes to go do what you need to do and do something that will boost your wellbeing. And when people came back they talked about what they did they mindfully made a cup of tea. They go and cuddled their dog or their cat or their kids or they went stood outside or they did 25 star jumps. And people said to me, what did you do? And I said I did 25 star jumps and I snuck my husband. Both of those things were opportune things that were available to me at the time that I knew were useful for my well being and hopefully if it is, too. So it's what can you also do when habits are not necessarily easy because life changes and fluctuates, pressure. But also the thing I love about that and I sometimes do that exercise with people where I'll literally time them. I'll say you've got two minutes right now go do something good for your well being. And you know what? Everybody knows what to do. You don't need me to tell you you know what to do. The problem is, we don't always do it. And again, that's another one of my sayings. You know it do you do it. Positive Psychology is not a spectator sport. You can't just know it. In theory, you have to do stuff

Daniel Franco: 55:38

that goes with everything right? You have to action it you can't just set a goal and hope it happens. Absolutely. The book, The secret thing here, the

Sue Langley: 55:45

great marketing.

Daniel Franco: 55:50

What's one of yours? What's one of what's the one that you you turn to most? As far as strategies? Yeah, like, what's one of those things like if I said to you, Sue, jump off this podcast for 30 seconds and do something that'll make you happy. What's one that you know that you can,

Sue Langley: 56:06

oh, it would probably be 25 star jumps and stuff. Partly because I know the brain needs you to move. So 25 star jumps is one of my go to or I have a little baby trampoline at the side of my desk just off my desk here I've got one of those baby rebounders and I'll jump up and down for a minute. I will definitely stop my husband if I've only got a couple of minutes. But I suppose when I think about my strategies, my habits, eat sleep and exercise are really important to me. And even if I'm working through the night, I'm working late or whatever you I will probably do them in the order of sleep, exercise, eat, they're the my sort of priorities. But I've got lots of strategies that I do that are my go to. So I've got the ritual before I go to bed. I do my three things I'm grateful for I write in my journal, etc. When I wake up in the morning, I savor my yellow bedroom, my frangipani tree, my carpet beneath my feet. Most people have forgotten about the carpet beneath their feet, but I savor it every morning. So I guess I have little things like that. If I think about probably my favorite thing that I will do ad hoc, and I suppose it's because I love the science behind it. And Antonio Damasio was one of the sort of first books that I read in this space on the physiology of emotions. One of my go twos is my physiology. So I know that if I change my physiology, I can change how I feel. And I've been practicing it so long now it's become pretty easy for me. So when I facilitate even if it's virtually I've got my feet flat on the ground, I am leveraged with energy upright, I can bounce off the balls of my feet still, and I can keep that energy. I don't slump in my chair, I don't sit back, when I'm in meetings, you'll never see me slouched because I know that if I change my physiology, I can change how I feel. So I suppose because I've spent a lot of time studying that space. It's become one of my very easily accessible, very frequent tools at my disposal.

Daniel Franco: 58:06

Yeah, I love it. I love it. My go to is sort of breathing exercises, I feel like, you know, go sit outside or doesn't even need to be outside. But just concentrate. It's almost like a mini meditation. Yeah. Try to blank my mind for 30 seconds. Concentrate on breathing. Yes. Try it on feeling the chair underneath me not like all the above. It's always I always treat it like, you know, turn the computer off and on again.

Sue Langley: 58:38

Absolutely. Mindfulness is a great strategy for that. And again, this is why I love the idea of lots and lots of strategies. Mindfulness, I'm not a big mindfulness practitioner, I teach it because it's part of it. And I let people know that these are some of the things that I do do. These are some things that I don't I use it when I need it. But I'm not a big mindfulness person. But so many people I know love is the absolute go to strategy. It really works for them. And again, this is what I think is so wonderful, that different things work for different people. And we should use them.

Daniel Franco: 59:11

Absolutely. I want to ask, we do have a corporate following for these podcasts. What What role does the leader play in business? When thinking about positive psychology?

Sue Langley: 59:27

Oh, huge role, as I'm sure you know, the leader, I think what was the Gallup survey, the leaders, how they show up is about 70% of how people perceive the climate of the team. So absolutely. And this is one of the questions I often ask new clients is describe your culture in three words or less tells me so much about the leader. So, you know, when we think about how is the leader showing up? I mean, we teach a lot of stuff around positive leadership and how do you show up where you create a climate where people can flourish? How do you use the strengths based approach In your teams, etc. How the leader shows up is really critical. And it's not to put all of the responsibility on the leader. But the reason you're in a leadership position is because people are looking to you for leadership. That's your job. That's what you're there for. And I think that's a powerful position to be in, and we should be using it for good, not evil. So if we do want to, if we say that well being is really important to us in our business, well, are we as the leader demonstrating that, so my team, for instance, they all see my calendar, and they can see although I work really long hours, so I've worked every night this week, till generally between 10 and 11, I've started everyday, pretty much nine or this morning at 630. And my team will see that however, they'll also see a block in my diary for 90 minutes for exercise, they'll see Fridays, completely clear, where I know I can catch up, I can they don't call me, I can go down the beach, I might call them if I want to, but I won't shedule anything. I'm also very, very well aware and I notice what my team are doing. So I have somebody in the UK that I know she starts early, when she wakes up and clears her emails from the day of Australia. She also stays Sometimes I work so late because she's got to deal with North American clients. So I also know that she takes sometimes three hours or two hours in the afternoon to go for a run or a walk. And when we all get together I'll often say our I love Tony getting your video at two o'clock on you know, yesterday, when you were running past Buckingham Palace, etc. That was so good to see well done on taking the brain. So it sounds a bit twee, but I will highlight not just what I'm doing and making it clear. But I'll also appreciate and show gratitude for other members of my team when I know that they're looking after their well being as well. And again, it's about demonstrating and I probably don't go down the the standard route of no emails at the weekend. And you're not allowed to do this. And you've got to restrict and I know as a leader, maybe that's important. But again, I've had those conversations with my team. And I've got team members who if I told them not to work on a Sunday would be really disappointed and demotivated because many of them like me, well, not many of them is probably about maybe a third. They love working a couple of hours on a Sunday to prepare themselves for the week. And if I took that away from them, then it would actually demotivate so also in our business. We do this and it's something we encourage to people to think about is what's known as basic psychological needs. So maybe one of the basic psychological needs of human beings is autonomy. So if there's a leader, you give autonomy to your people, you're motivating them, if you take it away, you're demotivating. So again, for me, I make it clear what we stand for as a business. And then people make their choices within that.

Daniel Franco: 1:02:44

We're all adults, right? Well, we know what works best for ourselves. I mean,

Sue Langley: 1:02:50

well saying that. It's an interesting one, Daniel, because I know that during the work from home, and I appreciate in South Australia, maybe it's been a bit different. But in many parts of the world. COVID has obviously caused quite a lot of stress for people around putting barriers in place and boundaries. But it's really interesting. I had a very senior leader on a call once and he was just lovely. And he took my response really well. He was suggesting as an exec team that they probably need to put in place that a Thursday at five o'clock, they needed to turn emails off, and then a Friday at four o'clock or not turn them on again till nine o'clock on Monday morning. And I said very sort of tongue in cheek, I said, Oh, you could be an adult and shut your laptop. And he kind of giggled, I knew what I meant is as a child you need your parents to take your technology away from you absolutely doesn't at all, you have a choice.

Daniel Franco: 1:03:42

And I think that's I think that's the main role of the leader is to one of the main roles I should say is to enable those who work with you to be able to find what works best for them. It's not your role to tell them how they should go about their business. I mean, obviously, there's analytics and metrics and everything else we need to sort of track but outside of that, you know you do what you do what works best for you. The one thing I want to ask you though, is we talked earlier about shame. And we do a lot of work in this space. My business partner, Michelle was gone and spent some time with Brene Brown over in the US and worked with her on the data lead stuff. And vulnerability is one of those things. There's positive psychology and vulnerability clash or do they complement each other?

Sue Langley: 1:04:41

Absolutely. Again, vulnerability is linked to emotions. And if I sort of go towards the emotion component more so than the positive psychology to be honest, because one of the paid one of the reasons sometimes we don't want to be vulnerable is because of the emotions that it creates, as in I feel scared but if I admit that I'm scared, I'm vulnerable. I I'm weak, etc. And this is what often comes out is we try and hide certain emotions by covering them with others. So you'll often find it's way easier for someone to express anger than it is to express fear. Because fear has a vulnerability to it, anger is I'm fighting back. I'm bigger than this, I'm, you know, sort of taking it on. But there is an element where fear and anxiety if we remember that emotions are just data, they're information, they're trying to tell us something, you can harness that fear that anxiety in a really positive way, if you accept it and deal with it, as opposed to thinking that it makes me vulnerable, because I'm scared or worried or nervous, etc. So I think vulnerability is an interesting one of you know, and again, I try and avoid some of the sort of cliches about authenticity and these sorts of things. I always think people are authentic, because they show up and do what they want to do so to speak. But if you think about vulnerability, if you are ever feeling less than you are feeling you are not good enough, you are feeling embarrassed, humiliated or something, we often want to cover that because we see it as being vulnerable. And yet, I'm not quite sure why. Because it's just data. It's just information. And it's just trying to tell you something. And if we understood that data, why would we need to be worried about being vulnerable?

Daniel Franco: 1:06:19

I love it. I love it. I want to ask you a question. This is one and as you can appreciate, I did a little bit of research on you sue and watch the letter your keynotes. And there was one area we that you spoke about, which was about gut health in one of your keynotes. Yeah. But But specifically, one question that was asked was, are we or do we have free will? Yes. And I want to unpack that, because I was so enthralled in your, in your explanation of how we do because they're obviously thought processes that we don't. And, you know, we're a little puppets on a string. And then there's the thought process, we'll know we always have choice.

Sue Langley: 1:07:13

It's a very interesting one. And to be honest on you, you've definitely done your homework because I have only spoken about freewill once in a keynote, so well done. So what's really interesting, so the reason that I also study the microbiome and gut health and things like that is not because I'm a nutritionist, and in that space, but because we know that the microbiome links very much to our well being. So it's in the space that I mean, I want to know as much as possible that links to neuroscience, etc. So I spent three weeks studying at the neuroscience school for Advanced Studies in Venice. And I was lucky enough to spend a whole week with literally the world experts on the microbiome. And it was a fascinating week, it was totally over my head. So literally, I was the only person in the room who was not a PhD, a neuroscientist attached to university and a professor. So I was way out of my depth, which was awesome. But what was really interesting for me,

Daniel Franco: 1:08:12

the smartest person in the room, yeah, it

Sue Langley: 1:08:14

was great. But the interesting thing about this concept of freewill and there are a few talks you can hear around this is it kind of links a little bit to the microbiome. And this is one of the things I do find fascinating. So we have a little bit of bacteria that live in us on us in every little orifice, including in our gut, and they are living beings. Now, if you think about any living being and what it needs, basically, its whole job is to survive. That's what living beings want to do they want to survive. So let's imagine I am a little piece of bacteria, a tiny little bacteria, and I survive on sugar. And I'm in your gut. Well guess what, if you're you're getting low on sugar in your gut, I'm going to be sending a little message somehow to try and make you eat sugar so that I can survive. And this is the amazing thing. And I often think about it as imagine these little bacteria in your gut and wherever they if you haven't got enough of it, they're going fee feed me and they're sending little messages through to your brain to say, Hold on, we need more of this,

Daniel Franco: 1:09:14

or we're gonna go to a couple 100,000.

Sue Langley: 1:09:18

And they also respond to other things, too. You might have bacteria that really loves cortisol. So guess what, you create stress in your life to feed it? Yeah, so anyway, so the idea of freewill is because of our neural programming, and because of the chemicals and the bacterial element in us that the suggestion is we don't have free will. And the conversation that was had was that when I went off the island to the main island, so where we were you would get the little ferry towards some Mark square. You will have if you're brave, you're wired that way you will have agility because you have no free will you're going to have one. And I'm like, well, doesn't it depend on whether I lie? Like Jilla tea or not, but even if I do like Jilla tea, well, what if I catch the ferry? And then I don't know it's diverted or something, and then I can't get to the gelato place? Or what happens if the gelato place is closed? Or what happens if I don't know where I'm in Venice and I get lost and I don't find a July device. And but what the theory is, is that you are driven by whatever your chemical and bacterial makeup, it's going to go and do what you need to do. And I'm not sure I like that idea. There is an argument I know Roy Baumeister did a great speech on this about a circular argument that sort of comes around that basically, you don't have any freewill. I think that kind of makes me want to go well, if I don't have any free will, why am I even bothering? But I think it comes back to we use the word a few times earlier on today, we often use the word lucky. And luck doesn't happen without having made choices. So this is the interesting thing is you might be primed in a certain way, based on your upbringing, your learning, etc. At the same time, it doesn't mean to say you can't learn something new. And again, this is where the work on habits comes in. When I moved up to Byron, I deliberately thought right fresh start. That's one of the first strategies around habits is fresh start, what are you going to do? Since I've lived here, it's literally warm lemon water every morning, walk on run on the beach every morning green drink every morning. It's a habit that I've got into since I've lived here because I took the advantage. Whereas maybe if I'd have stayed in Sydney, then my freewill would have been eroded. Because I wouldn't have had that opportunity. Who knows? Absolutely. It's an interesting topic.

Daniel Franco: 1:11:38

And we could go on forever, I am conscious of your time, I want you to just sort of round off the conversation with we've just gone through a pandemic, the world is in a space of pain. From a psychology standpoint, and the mental well being standpoint, there's a there's a few few scary stories out there with with some statistics. And all the above, I want to ask you the question, I don't want to get into the detail of what the pandemic did or where we find ourselves now, but more so from an optimistic standpoint. What is your future outlook standpoint? What is your view on where we will be moving? In the future? Like and how much do you think like, because we spoke about learning from our to flourish is to learn from those moments? Do you think as a human species, we will learn from the past 18 months?

Sue Langley: 1:12:41

I think some people will some people won't. So I think that's an interesting one. What's really interesting is, and again, this is one of my pet topics, is language. So when we think about the language we use, very early on in the pandemic, we got news headlines saying the next pandemic mental health, mental illness challenges, everybody is going to be, you know, stuffed. And you've just said the world is in pain, if you like, well, if we just pick that apart for a moment is the world in pain? Well, I don't know, there's dolphins in the Venetian Lagoon. There's creatures that have come back onto the beach, where I used to live, they've got the largest population have seal pups on the beach in North Norfolk right now than they've ever had before. So the world may not be in pain, but if I think it is, I'm going to see the bad stuff. Whereas potentially there's good stuff. Now, I'm not suggesting some people haven't had it tough. Many people have had it tough during this. I'm not discounting that. But what's really interesting to me is most of the data that's reported is based on research that's looking at what's wrong. In the last 12 months, approximately 1% of research papers published have shown positives. Now it doesn't mean to say there's only 1% positives, it means there's only 1% of research papers, look. Yeah. So of course what you're getting is the 99%. But here's some interesting stuff. We're federal ly absolutely mean we don't have free will. Potentially that's what harms our free will. So if we look at some statistics, UK, for example, first three months of the pandemic massive hit on people's mental health, particularly with younger population, so the younger population was harvested. What they didn't share with you with within three months, most people were back up to where they were previously and the youngest population, the younger group of population had made bigger recoveries. They didn't teach you that. If you look at the statistics around depression, anxiety, the original thing is oh my god, huge mental health, whatever. You haven't actually gone up. No. Suicides went down.

Daniel Franco: 1:14:52

Yes, I did hear that. I heard that because, well, from what I was, the information that was said to me was because during a pandemic, we generally band together, there is more sense of community, there's more sense of purpose, we're all on the same playing field. Therefore, suicide went down as a result.

Sue Langley: 1:15:13

Well, this is again, the interesting thing, if you look at the research that's come out recently, and again, because of the space, I mean, I guess I see the other side of things as well. There's a brilliant paper that came out earlier this year, that was a meta analysis of 22. Other studies, so nobody read the 22 others, and probably very few people read the meta analysis. But it was a meta analysis of 22 other studies across various countries. And it looks to your point about the benefits, the the building effects, the good stuff. And what was really interesting is and again, there was one in Japan that said, Yes, depression, anxiety increased a little but actually happiness and life satisfaction hadn't decreased. There was studies around what were the positive outcomes such as people focus more on their families focus more on what's important to them, people actually getting healthier, because they weren't commuting all the time. They were looking at people who use their strengths more often, were actually able to buffer the adversity, people who had a sense of meaning and contribution, there's been so much research around self determination theory, and those three basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness that is found Yes, when those three are hit, as in, you're told to work from home, you don't know what you're doing, because all of a sudden, you've never worked behind before. And it's scary and you feel isolated, your motivation takes a hit. But when we start to put things in place to go, Okay, well, actually, I can still stay connected. And I'm going to do it this way. I actually feel like I'm growing and learning new things. And I'm getting this hang of this. And guess what, I've got autonomy over my entire day right now. It can help didn't depends on how we look at things.

Daniel Franco: 1:16:48

I think, I think that is the answer to every question in life, it just really depends on how you look at it. Whatever question whatever obstacle gets thrown your way. It is always about the angle in which you view it. Yeah, the approach that you take to get over it.

Sue Langley: 1:17:03

And this is why I've got this real thing about language at the moment and is interesting as obviously, this is going on your podcast. We when we started our podcast, I think my first three were all on language because I got such on my soapbox reality. Because the language we use in our head or out of our mouth, shapes our well being and there's a whole bunch of research on what they call wellbeing literacy as in what language are you using? Do you understand language around well being? What's coming out of your mouth? What's going on your head? And I just think this is really fascinating because the number of podcasts The first thing I hear not on this one, the first thing I hear somebody asked me is everyone's suffering right now. And the first thing I go is is everyone suffering right now. And but as soon as you use the word everyone or everything or always or never. You're making it heightened, if you look at the news, I

Daniel Franco: 1:17:53

told you 1000 times, yes. Same thing.

Sue Langley: 1:17:57

Yeah, I remember the news. I don't watch the news. But something popped up on my phone about a week ago. And the headline caught my attention and made me giggle. And it said, Christmas disaster. Shipping crisis means no toys or something. And I thought how funny they've got the word disaster and crisis in a story about your might not get a toy for Christmas, or language conditioning problems. It's just hilarious. When you look at the language that you use, listen to what goes on in your head, listen to what comes out of your mouth. And you'll find if you can change elements of your language, you can actually shape what comes next a lot of the time.

Daniel Franco: 1:18:43

I love it. That is a perfect advice to sort of round off the conversation. So are we doing the podcast with some quickfire questions and I'm just conscious of time I really want to make sure these are quickfire. So okay, but we're big readers here on the creative energy podcast. What sample curating

Sue Langley: 1:19:05

right now. How to Change Katy milkmen. Great One on habits.

Daniel Franco: 1:19:11

Brilliant how to change by Katy milkman. So for anyone who's listening we will have all these in the show notes. So go back and check them.

Sue Langley: 1:19:19

Can I tell you my favorite book that I

Daniel Franco: 1:19:20

was about to ask you the question what is your favorite book or what's one that you feel that stands out and that you've recommended the most?

Sue Langley: 1:19:28

Yeah, the one I've recommended the most and the one that I had out literally last night and I'll probably have it out again tonight is on my top shelf. You can't quite see it. It's called Social by Matt Lieberman. Brilliant

Daniel Franco: 1:19:37

social Matt Lieberman met he's he's written a few other books as well.

Sue Langley: 1:19:42

He's a neuroscientist. I think social is his main one is a social neuroscientist, but it's a brilliant. I love it.

Daniel Franco: 1:19:49

Excellent social by Matt Lieberman. Are there any other podcasts that you listen to other than your own? And this one obviously.

Sue Langley: 1:19:58

I have to admit I don't Listen to any podcasts not even my own. I don't know what it is every so often people recommend one and I literally listen for about three minutes and I get bored. And

Daniel Franco: 1:20:13

that's what happens when you're the smartest person in the room.

Sue Langley: 1:20:17

I do I do. I don't know. I don't know. Sorry. I tell a lie. This is a podcast. Of course it is. I'm learning Italian at the moment. So I I bought the course. So I wasn't thinking of it as a podcast, but Coffee Break Italian. I love it. I run along the beach and I'm learning my Italian. So for me the reason I love it is because it forces me to learn.

Daniel Franco: 1:20:38

Brilliant. What's one of what's one lesson that's taking you the longest to learn?

Sue Langley: 1:20:45

Oh, I don't know about longest but it's one that sticks in my head. When I first started my business. I got some advice that said find your niche and stick to it. It took me a year to take that advice. But the minute I did my business has flourished ever since.

Daniel Franco: 1:21:01

Yeah, yeah. Clear. It's it's actually one that I grapple with. Because I've got that sort of optimistic mentality of yeah, we can do. We could do it all. So I'm really I'm really working with that one. I have three people over for dinner, who was Oh

Sue Langley: 1:21:21

Mark, Boni Antonio Damasio and Ellen Langer.

Daniel Franco: 1:21:29

So I'm assuming they're all in that positive.

Sue Langley: 1:21:32

Mark Jakob, ONi is a neuroscientist. One of the team has talked about mirror neurons and all that sort of stuff. Antonio Damasio is the feeling emotion type person and Ellen Langer. I love her she is I don't know the mother of positive psychology in the fact that while she's not as famous as the others, she's a Harvard professor. She's amazing. I love it to bits, we we've had great conversations. She is one of the most irreverent people hence, sometimes she's not accepted in the world of positive psychology now and again, because she likes to challenge the status quo. She's done some amazing research. And I've had some very deep and meaningful conversations with her that I value.

Daniel Franco: 1:22:13

Brilliant. So we're assuming your husband got an invite? Right? Is it

Sue Langley: 1:22:17

tight to be? Dinner and left? Just do it

Daniel Franco: 1:22:23

over and walk out? Absolutely. Very good. If you had access to a time machine, where would you go? Right here. In the present moment,

Sue Langley: 1:22:35

yeah, I'm not i i don't I'm not very good at the whole history in the past and things like that. I don't believe in sort of regrets. But also my husband's very much into history. And sometimes watching history programs. I'm like, yeah.

Daniel Franco: 1:22:49

But you can always go forward.

Sue Langley: 1:22:52

Yeah, good. But no, I love life. I love people. I love where we're at. And I don't think it would make any difference of whether I'm in the future or the past of my well being and how I approach things and whatever you I don't want it to. So if you don't meet anywhere, I'm sure I'd be okay. But I love where I am. I love the possibilities that there are in the world if we choose to use them.

Daniel Franco: 1:23:17

That's so refreshing. You're the first person that's ever said, I'll stay right where I am.

Sue Langley: 1:23:22

I'm so glad I'm different.

Daniel Franco: 1:23:25

If you had one superhero power, what would it be? Oh,

Sue Langley: 1:23:31

well, I kind of have already honed the one that I would like, which is to be able to feel what people feel and Intuit intuited. So I love the idea of being able to hear to feel what other people feel or to see what other people feel. And I've honed it as well as I can that sometimes I know how somebody is feeling before they do, or I know what they're thinking before they do. And not in any mystic way. I don't think I'm some weird psychic. But if you learn some of this stuff, you can see and feel what people are feeling. And I think that's an amazing power to have. Because then you can make more effective choices about how you're going to interact with that person.

Daniel Franco: 1:24:14

That's amazing. Thank you so much for your time today, Sue, thank you for everything that you're doing. As well, in this world of positive psychology, you are spreading an amazing message for those who are who are interested in learning about, you know, turning their lives into a much more optimistic future and, and looking to improve on themselves and their own ways of thinking and their habits and the language that they use themselves to into themselves. So we all really appreciate the work you're doing and thank you very much for your time and hard and hard effort.

Sue Langley: 1:24:50

Thank you for having me. It's always an honor to be asked and it's been a pleasure having conversations. I love it when I get asked good questions.

Daniel Franco: 1:24:57

Brilliant. Thank you again. So where can we find you sue Langley on LinkedIn?

Sue Langley: 1:25:03

Yes, you log me on LinkedIn. suelangley.com.au, learnwithsue.com.au or Langleygroup.com.au, you'll find me in various spots.

Daniel Franco: 1:25:13

Yeah, I empower everyone listening to go and check her out because she runs some amazing courses and teaches some amazing stuff. So thanks again, Sue. We'll catch you next time.

Sue Langley: 1:25:24

Thank you, Daniel. Really appreciate it. Thanks, guys. Bye.

Daniel Franco: 1:25:29

Thanks for listening to the podcast. Or you can check out the show notes if there was anything of interest to you and find out more about us at Synergyiq.com.au I am going to ask though, if you did like the podcast, it would absolutely mean the world to me if you could subscribe, rate and review. And if you didn't like it, that's alright too. There's no need to do anything. Take care guys. All the best.

Synergy IQ: 1:25:53

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