Episode 210: How to Be Happier as a Parent with Marc Fussell
/Parenting is a journey filled with highs and lows, and it can sometimes feel overwhelming. In this episode, we’ll dive into an essential but often overlooked topic: your happiness and well-being as a parent. Together with Marc Fussell, founder of the nonprofit Take 2 Minutes, we’ll explore how positive psychology can help you find joy, take better care of yourself, and foster a healthier, happier home environment for your family.
Here are the key takeaways:
Distinguishing positive psychology from toxic positivity by recognizing and processing emotions
Strategies for parents to support themselves and their children during challenging days
Maintaining emotional well-being as a parent
Prioritizing self-care for parents through mindset shifts and manageable steps
How parents can help children manage negative emotions and develop self-regulation strategies
How parents and individuals can use tailored practices (e.g.grounding exercises and gratitude) to address specific emotional challenges
If you want to connect with Marc, you can visit his website at take2minutes.org.
Remember, your happiness and well-being as a parent are essential—not just for you, but for your entire family.
TRANSCRIPT
Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic, overwhelmed. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do. Not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.
Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go!
Laura: Hello, everybody. This is Doctor Laura Froyen. And on this week's episode of The Balanced Parent Podcast, we're gonna be talking about you and your happiness, your enjoyment in this stage of life. I know that parenting can be wonderful, filled with highs and then also with lows and sometimes it can feel like a slog. I think we all go into this parenting job with the idea that it is gonna be wonderful that we are going to have deep lasting relationships with our kids. And then we don't think a lot about the day to day impact of being a parenting on our own well being and how important our well being is to our children's development. So we're gonna have this conversation today around how to be happier and how to take better care of ourselves as parents to help me with this conversation. I have Marc Fussell. He is going to walk us through how to kind of take better care of ourselves using positive psychology and mental health perspectives. So, Marc, welcome to the show. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do?
Marc: Thank you, Laura. I appreciate it. I'm glad to be here. My name is Marc Fussel. As you said, I am the founder of Take Two Minutes, a nonprofit which focuses on positive psychology and ways to help people get into a better, more positive mindset. As you mentioned, on the onset, positive psychology can help people, better themselves ideally or recognize ways to get into a better, more happy state. And over the last, since 2024 I guess it's been a solid eight years now. Developing take two minutes. I've been able to talk to dozens of psychologists, counselors and coaches and gain more knowledge around all these fields and ways people can improve their mental well being.
Laura: I feel very interested given that, you know, we're, we're still coming out of the pandemic. You know, we're four years out from that, from 2020. I feel kind of curious what it was like developing this during a time that was really hard on a lot of people's mental health, whether you're a parent or not.
Marc: Yeah, it was interesting. So the development started in about 2017 or 2018 and by 2019, I think I released the first version of Take two minutes right at the end of 2019. So right before COVID really hit us in early 2020. And so it was a tool available, but of course, even today, it's not a well known tool. So it didn't have a lot of users back then. I would say since 2020 I've had about 30,000 people use the system, which all in all is a very tiny number compared to the people who are looking for ways to find mental well being.
Laura: Okay. So Marc, can you talk me through this? So I feel like there's some misconceptions about what positive psychology means. I'd love to know what it means to you. And can you kind of contrast that with toxic positivity, how it looks different and how it can actually be supportive.
Marc: Right? So there's a lot there, like we can talk about positive psychology, right? There's a lot that's okay. Positive psychology is in my mind, in my perception, the idea of recognizing how you can be more positive or in a better mental state as we talked about on the onset and kind of what I call the green room. There's never, every day is never a perfect day. You, you're gonna have ebbs and flows in life, you're gonna have challenges. You know, as a parent, there's gonna be challenges as a nonparent, there's gonna be challenges, everyone has work challenges where it may be. So not every day is a perfect day. My interpretation of positive psychology is the idea that you recognize how to pull yourself out of those times where it is not a good day or you're not in a good mood and that doesn't mean you're good at toxic positivity. It doesn't mean that if you're having a bad day, if you're grieving, for instance, you should just put the switch in sudden you're happy. That's not reality.
Reality is you can recognize that you are in a bad state that you are grieving that,you lost someone and you can process that and get through it and a, to, in an amount of time that fits for you, but you are able to get through it and not fall deeper down a hole to where you become depressive. Yeah, exactly. So, that's the important thing. And I'll give you an example. I have a really good friend who we talk to weekly and he loves for two minutes and he's very similar to me in our ability to have positivity. But he and I, as everyone, I'm just using, he and I, as an example, we have bad days and everyone has bad days. The beauty in my mind of when I have a bad day is I'm recognizing, I'm having a bad day. I'm recognizing I'm in a bad mood. Maybe I know why, maybe, I don't know why. We don't always know why we have those triggers that make us a little bit more sour. Right. But I recognize it and since I'm able to recognize it, I don't project that negativity onto others erroneously. Meaning I don't just, all of a sudden because I'm in a bad mood, be mean to my employees or be mean to my family. I try to be more reserved during those days because I recognize them having a bad day. Now, that bad day might turn into a bad week. I don't know. Again. Right. Everyone has different ways, they deal with things. But the purpose of positive psychology again, in my interpretation is that I'm able to recognize that and I'm able to know what I need to do to pull myself out of that. Now, that doesn't mean that as soon as I'm negative, I'm gonna start taking action to become positive. You have to process your emotions. Who is the reason why? I don't know the number, it's like 380 emotions known, right? There's a reason why there's so many we should experience them all. They're, they're there for us to experience. And I think experiencing this in a important part of life. But through positive psychology, I'm able to recognize.
All right, it's been three days. I don't know why I'm in a bad mood. Let's start doing things that I know will help me get into a better mood and take those steps to turn, turn it around and become positive again. And to that this goes to the whole toxic positivity. If someone's in a bad mood and, and I recognize that I don't use things like, oh, you know, turn that frown upside down, you should be happy. Don't, don't worry about things. Yeah. Right. Exactly. You know, those are finding a silver lining. But it doesn't mean someone's gonna just snap and be happy all of a sudden. You can't expect that. Exactly. Maybe they're not ready at their time. So, that's toxic positivity. And that's not good either. And there's also false positivity. I don't think that's a good thing. Either. Take two minutes or what I talk about isn't trying to make people be falsely positive. It's really meant to show you ways that you can recognize positivity more more easily in your life.
Laura: Yeah. And I feel like too, I, I'm, I feel like part of what I'm hearing you say is that there's this piece of recognizing when you are in one of those hard days that, that hard day is temporary that it's not forever, that it is not your whole being because you've recognized how you're feeling in those more, more positive times. So there's this piece of it by kind of keeping on top of noticing, checking in with yourself, acknowledging, maybe, you know, practicing gratitude, all of those things. You have a, a baseline where you're really aware of where you are on a, on a regular basis. And then when you notice yourself in one of those harder days, you know, that it's temporary, you know, that it doesn't last forever. Is that right?
Marc: There's a piece of it. Absolutely. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Even unfortunate, you know, the loss of a loved one that's really hard to overcome. That's not going to be quite often a, a day or two turn around. That might be, you know, weeks to turn around and again, someone's got to process that on their own time. But the idea is it, it is going to pass and it doesn't mean you have to learn to live without someone. You have to learn to continue to live quite often. Right? So it's getting back to a state where you are accepting the way things are now and you're able to be in a better state than an oppressive state.
Laura: Got it. Okay. So I feel like there is kind of two directions I would like to go with you because one I would love to talk about. Okay, so how can we, what are some of the things we can do on a regular basis for ourselves? I think I, you know, I hear from a lot of parents, um particularly moms that this parenting gig is hard that we do. You know, we serve a lot of people in our lives. Sometimes that's not acknowledged at the level that, you know, we would like it to be. We give a lot of ourselves. What can I, so I guess there's that piece and I would also like love. I know that you're not a, a child person, but I would love to just talk a little bit about how we can support our kids when they come home in one of those. Like, no good, very bad days, you know. But let's talk about parents supporting ourselves.
Marc: Yeah. Yeah. So, first off, let me say I'm not a child person. I have two kids. So I, I guess, think of myself as a child.
Laura: I mean, that, I mean, like, you normally teach adults. You know, you're not, you're not like a school psychologist who's teaching kids.
Marc: All right. But I do think that, you know, being a parent, it's challenging, like you said, but I also think it's pretty beautiful. You, you make a lot of memories and I think I see a lot of parents that expect or let's just say just have expectations of their kids, which is a good thing. We have to realize they are children, they're learning. And so you can't allow, you can't let their, if they don't meet your expectations, don't let that bring you down realize that they're learning too. And again, recognize that and like when my son, I know this couple of days ago I just yesterday, actually, I got a note from the principal that he's been tardy to school. He just started driving this last year. He's been tardy to school a couple of times and they were addressing it as an issue. Nothing is my wife but her, her answer was we need to, you know, ground him or, you know, take his car away. I don't know what she said, but it was something more drastic and I was like, it's learning for him and it's kind of comical because I know I probably had a few days like that also. So I take the different approach of, yeah, it's gonna be okay. We just got to, you know, tell him that there's an expectation to go to school on time. And this is a learning experience for him. It's not the end of the world, right? He's late for school a couple of times. It's a bad thing, but it's not really a drastic thing.
Laura: Oh I feel like I'm getting a sense of kind of an attachment where your sense of yourself, your own happiness, your own enjoyment is not necessarily influenced by your kids behavior. And I think that that's something that is very hard for parents to achieve that we are constantly judging ourselves based on our kids behavior that we feel like our worth as a parent, whether we're doing a good job is very closely tied. Oh, I just hit my microphone, sorry that we're very closely tied to the what our kid is doing. And so I'm kind can we talk about that? Like that kind of unattached posture you seem to have?
Marc: Yeah, they weren't unattached to me. Seems a little strong just to me. But I, because I obviously absolutely love my children. But yeah.
Laura: From a consciousness perspective, like having kind of a separation of like a non enmeshed, you know, a sense of self that is your own and insular as opposed to being merged with your child. I don't mean it and, and relating to attachment theory, that's such a good, you know, statement to make sure our listeners are hearing. Thank you, Marc.
Marc: Yeah. No, no, no problem. But what you said, and this is a statement that can be taken multiple ways, but I try to tell people all the time you shouldn't let external factors control your emotions. Now there's a lot there. It, it's not 100% accurate. That statement is not completely totality by itself, some external factors are gonna affect your emotions. But if it's something you can't control, if it's something completely out of your control and you let it affect your emotions, I'm not sure if that's a good use of your emotions at that point in time. Now your children are something that you have some control over, right? So going back to children, if you know, he did something that I think was bad, I might be more worried and you know what that is, I think that's up to some perception that that can be debated. But being tardy for school, I'm not gonna let that bring me down, you know him. Another thing, grades, grades are important. I fully believe learning is terribly important. But if he comes home with a D on a test, it's an, it's a test, it's one test. As long as he's averaging better, I'm not gonna that bring me down. So I guess my point is I tried to look at the situation.
Laura: Right. So, I mean, even in that scenario, if he comes home with a D, you can be concerned for him, helpful towards him, How can problem solve and support him without it necessarily affecting you emotionally. Is that what you're saying?
Marc: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And you should because you want it. Yeah, it's through conversation and obviously the conversation is different from a six year old to a 16 year old. But as a 16 year old, there's a lot of conversations around, you know, you got a D on this test, maybe you need to prepare yourself a little better next time . On the whole, you still would be in the class. So this isn't terrible. If you get enough Ds, you're gonna drop your grade down to a C, then down to a D, then you might be in trouble. So it's, it's learning and recognition, right? And that's what children, that, that's what life is all about. I mean, I think I'm learning things every day and our children are learning massive amounts more than we are. Right. So they're gonna fail, they're gonna falter that those and even for us failure and falter is important in life. I think that's how you learn, that's how you grow. I have failed so many times in life already. It's one of those things where, but I think of it, I look back on them all as those were all learning experiences for me and I'm hoping my children have the same experiences. We can talk about a lot of things here. It's going into my mind. I mean, children right now.
Laura: Can I just clarify too? So I, apart from the conversation with your son around his, you know, pretend D that is not actually happening. What are you doing within yourself? To keep that level of emotional wellness within you can keep your, your own, your own sense of emotional well being protected. What is the process inside? How do we build that capacity?
Marc: And that is important. It's through self care in my mind and self care is different for each individual. Some people, especially parents, they're busy. A lot of people are busy in today's world and you don't think you have time for yourself. But I truly believe taking time for yourself helps you be better, more present when you are with your family. So I think self care is important and self care comes in many forms. Me, I try to make time every day for either a walk with my dogs. There's one over here, but I walk with my dogs. Maybe it is exercising. Maybe it's yoga, maybe it's some meditation. Right. It doesn't have to be lengthy. It can be 20-30 minutes. But I, I take time for myself every day and for me it works out best if I'm alone. I want some alone time to gather my thoughts, think through things. But those, let's say 20-30-40 minutes every day are important for me to kind of center myself, calm myself and get into my state for the day. Now that, that, that activity and how I feel afterwards again is different every day. Right? Because every day is a different day. So it's not like every day I get to the exact same state and I'm ready to go. But it does help me get into a mindset for the day and keep my ideal positivity or ability to not react to situations, more centered.
And I think a large part of it is I have, I say this often that I, I have multiple jobs. I have multiple responsibilities and I think a lot of people have that they have multiple, you know, you're a parent, you maybe you're making money for the family. You have maybe laundry, you have a lot of things going on. Yeah, you wear lots of hats. Exactly. So, something that people need to realize is, not every hat has to be a 100% right. You're not going to accomplish 100% perfection or wear all your hats and that's okay. Don't, don't let that weigh on you do your best. You can every day and recognize that there's tomorrow because you're not gonna always get everything done. There's no, and if you get overstressed about that, you're not helping your mental well being by becoming overly stressed, you didn't get everything you wanted to do in that one day.
Laura: All right. So I feel very curious about kind of, I, I love the recommendation for self care. I'm 100% on board with you on that. And I love that you're talking about examples that are actually quite nourishing and not kind of like the low hanging fruit. What we think of as self care, you know, the bubble baths, you know, those things I you're talking about actually good care. I would add, making sure you're getting enough sleep, making sure that you're nourishing your body with, with, you know, energy is coming in at regular intervals that you're giving your body and you know, enough water that you're treating your body like you would a beloved pet as opposed to something you're just ignoring. You know, I, I wonder though for some, for some parents who are wearing all of those hats, they find that when we ask them to do self care, it's just adding one more thing to the list. And I'm curious to know if you have any mindset shifts for, for parents to help them make it easier to make themselves a priority or like a small first step that is helpful to the folks that, you know, that you work with or that you've, you've seen or for yourself.
Marc: Yeah. So, going back, I, I do believe that taking that time helps you be more present and better in all your days. So, more present to your family. And I've heard many people say, well, well, if I take 20 minutes or a half hour for myself or even an hour, that's time I'm taking away from my family or time I taking away from work. But in my, I would flip it around and say that's gonna make you more present during those times with your family or be more mindful for work so you can do better work. So I think that time you take for yourself actually makes you more productive throughout the day. And baby steps to do to start taking self care. I got a lot of ideas. I don't know if I have one that is tried and true. But you know, meditation is huge. I mean, there's a reason why comm is such a huge company. There's a reason why headspace is such a huge company. People are trying to meditate. Take two minutes has hundreds and hundreds of meditations out there.
And I'm not saying take two minutes is the right platform for you. Let's talk about meditation just real quick quickly too, since I brought up there are so many different ways to meditate. So many different types of meditations. I think it's important for someone if they want to try it because you can do a 10 minute meditation, feel very arrested afterwards, very clear, very ready to do something. But that 10 minutes you spend, you have to find the type of meditation that works best for you. And what that means is if you try to be calm and don't like meditation, that's okay. If you take me for you, there are so many different types of meditations. Yeah. Even within take two minutes, I have meditational stories. I have breathing exercises. I have anxiety meditations. There's even different types of meditations within take two minutes. You can try, but the point is try them, try them solidly for a month and see if you find the style you like. And then me, I've done it enough over the years where when I do meditate, I quite often just sit down in a quiet place without any audio, audio at all. It's just myself and my thoughts following my breathing. You get used to it at that point in time. But keep trying to find a method you like. And ideally, you're gonna grow from that and find a way to do it on your own in the future.
Laura: I like that. You know. So for me, I, there's a few that I like to start my fa the families that I work with off with that are more like built into the fabric of their, their days. So like a quick loving kindness meditation when you're at every time you stop at a red light. So just quick ha you know, we're sitting at a red light hand on your heart. May I be you know, safe, may I be loved? You know, may I live in comfort and use, you know, just then shape the green light goes and then you're off on your, on your time. I also like environmental scans. That type of meditation is really great for busy parents. If you can just find even a minute, like set your time, set a timer for a minute and just close your eyes and listen to what's happening around you. Maybe you hear the soft hum of the dishwasher, you hear your kids playing Legos, you know, like just kind of just cluing into the sounds around you.
That can be a nice way to like, you know, just be fully present in the moment with what you're doing. I also like mindful dishwashing. So being fully present in the experience of washing dishes, we've got to wash dishes anyway. So doing that as an exercise on a regular basis where you are really closely attending to the feel of the water over your skin, you know, it's temperature, the soap, the feel of something gritty that you're trying to scrape off just really like attending to it. But I think that there is ways to get into meditation that because I think meditation can be really intimidating for a lot of people. The idea of just sitting there with a blank mind, I think that it can be so intimidating. But I like the idea of having some guided options too when I was learning to do so, to be more mindful and present. I used a lot of guided meditations.
Marc: Yeah. And they're great. They're great for starters. That's why there's like I said, 302 183 180 built in the take two minutes, just different types. And we have some really good voices in take two minutes as well that I think are wonderful. And I say voices, you know, voice talents is what it is. There's one girl, her name is Maris. So I think her meditations are just phenomenal. Sure. Her voice is so loving. Her messages are so loving and it really helps you just kind of calm down and focus on her and the beautiful things she's saying during her meditations.
Laura: Oh, I like that. It's cool that you give her a shout out. Okay, so tell me a little bit about what we can do as parents to support kids when they are stuck in a negative headspace. Just as an example, my nine year old came home from school yesterday and a number of things that happened over the course of the day that just, like, really put her in a sour mood. And by the time bedtime rolled around, she was kind of having an existential crisis. Like, why is everything so boring? Why do I have to do all the things at school that are so, you know, pointless. Like no one needs to know addition, we've got computers, you know, calculate. I mean, she was just having one of those like, complete, like spirals around, you know, like, and it eventually, like culminated in like, I wish I could just be a cat who is so happy.
Someone else feeds her and she just has to lay in the sun, you know. So, I mean, it was just a kind of and, and, and kids, you know, have these little spirals. But is there anything that we can do besides just sitting there in it? Which is what I did? I just did a lot of validating like, oh man. Yeah, sometimes I fantasize about being a cat too, you know, like that would be so easy. But is there anything we can do when we see our kids kind of, you know, this was very temporary, you know, eventually she just shrugged her shoulders and said I'm not going to solve this tonight. I may as well go to sleep, you know. But, is there any, like if this persists and we see our kids kind of in one of, you know, sucked down into one of these bad news stories? Is there anything that we can do not to cheer them up but to, to teach them how to get themselves out?
Marc: Yeah, I have two recommendations. One is actually from another parent who brought this idea to me and I'm gonna give you a little background. So, take two minutes. One of the activities that, that we have in take two minutes, which is different than a lot of other offerings out there is an activity, activity called three good things. The idea behind three good things is that the in of the day, not the beginning of the day, but at the end of the day, you are an adult. When I say you, an adult is supposed to reflect on that day and think of three good things that happened that day that puts your mind into a positive state prior to bedtime and your subconscious works and that we can apply that to children though. So as a parent, once they're going through this crisis, I think probably the best thing is let let them go through the crisis a little bit like you did comfort them, give them answers. But then once you feel like it's maybe peaking or starting to come back down, sit down and say, why don't you tell me three good things that you happened to you today? Think of anything you can think of that happened. And you know, of course, the answer may be nothing but then you can, you can try to work on that. Well, did you have any fun at all at school today? Did you talk to anyone in a good mood and get them to express three good things or three happy things that had happened during that day?
And that helps shift their mind around. And if you do it at night time, the whole idea of your subconscious working that positivity still applies to a child. I mean, that's one of the things about three good things that's so powerful is it's actually rewiring your brain to recognize positivity. So you can start that with a child at a young age just by asking them at the end of the day. Think of three good things that happened to you, also something else I've done in the past going back to meditations is when my son was my younger son, when he was struggling. At times, we'd go into a dark room, sit down, you know, cross legged and we would, he'd sit in front of me. We and I would, I don't even hold his hand and we turn white off and say, we're gonna be, we're gonna be in five minutes of silence. We're gonna me meditate and he didn't know what meditating was. And I said, all you're gonna do is just breathe or we're just gonna sit here and breathe, no talking. And we set a timer for five minutes and we did that every day for a while and I got him into the habit of calming down sometimes as well. I don't think we started with five minutes. We might have when he was, you know, six years old, started with two minutes and built up to five. I think we got to 10 minutes for a while. But it's just sitting with him in a quiet room and letting him process his thoughts and no talking. And, it became a very good time between him and I, because we did it, we didn't do it daily. I think we probably did it, you know, two times a week for a while and that became kind of a bonding moment also.
Laura: So, it sounds like he's a teenager now.
Marc: Yeah, he's driving. He's 16 now. Correct?
Laura: Yes. Oh, my gosh. So, is he still doing that? Do you know if he still has a connection to a meditation practice?
Marc: And we haven't talked about it much. So, I don't know if he still does. Obviously he hears a lot about trying to be positive through me because, yeah, because everything that I do. So he, he, and both of my kids hear a lot about that. My older son, he helps with taking two minutes a lot and he, I think he, gets a lot of the principles, you know, you mentioned gratitude earlier. I think gratitude is such a powerful thing. And as parents, as people, anyone whose parents hurt people, I just say people is a general statement. I think recognizing gratitude is a hugely beneficial activity for people to do. And with take two minutes something I recognized. It's so early on when I was developing it and talking to users who are using it is some people have struggled with recognizing gratitude. There's a lot of people in this world who I've spoken with who say I would love to start a gratitude practice. Every time I sit down, I don't know what to write before that. Within take two minutes, I created what's called a gratitude challenge. Now, what I've learned through use cases, the talk focus groups will call them focus groups. I've done is I took a bunch of people who were not familiar with gratitude journaling and I had them all do a gratitude challenge. And I said you're gonna do a 15 day gratitude challenge and the gratitude challenge. What it does is every day it sends you a prompt of something for which you could be grateful. And it asks you to write a statement about why you're grateful for it.
What that allows people to do if you do it for 15 days, you are again rewiring your brain to recognize things to which you're grateful. And after about 10,12, 14 days, almost everybody came back to me and said, I just recognize things now as I'm walking around in my day that I'm thankful for. And most of them started a gratitude practice after the gratitude challenge on their own because they said they're just recognizing gratitude, they rewired their brains to recognize those things and that's powerful because if you're recognizing things, you're grateful for, it's going to put you into a better mindset. If you're walking out with your kids, going to school and you smell honey stuff, like I really enjoy the smell of honey stuff, but you're recognizing those things in your life and it's putting you into a better mental state. So I think gratitude journaling is huge for everyone to help themselves get into a better mental state.
Laura: And I really like low, like low entry points, right? Like there's a, it's a very doable thing. So I've heard of a challenge there. So listeners, as you're hearing this, if the, you know, if you are not feeling, you know, you know, if you're just in kind of a hard season of life in your parenting, we're not asking you to pretend that you're not right. We're not asking you to, to just, you know, be, be positive all the time, but we are asking you to maybe like challenge yourself. Okay? So between now and the next time this episode, you know, the next episode of this podcast comes out or it comes into your ears writing down how, how many things, one thing a day that you are grateful for.
Marc: Yeah, one thing a day, just think of one thing a day. If you can't think of something, I'm gonna say, go back to take two minutes to start the challenge. So you know what I give you, I'll give you an example of one of the challenge questions. One of the challenge questions says the sun provides warmth and light to our planet. Think of a reason why you like the sun. So those little nuggets, it doesn't have to be profound off the bat. You can just say I, I like a sunny day, the feeling of the warmth of my skin. That's a gratitude statement. You recognize something you like, you do that repeatedly one a day for 15 days and you're gonna see a change in how you are viewing life.
Laura: Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, I think sometimes we, I like the prompt. I really like the idea of those prompts because I think sometimes I would, if I were, I would just go for the easy like I'm grateful for my kids. I'm grateful for my husband. Right. So really trying to be grateful for the smaller things in life. Like I'm thinking about the strawberries that I had with my cottage cheese for breakfast this morning. They were excellent strawberries. They were very juicy and sweet and tart like that sort of thing where we can really notice the finer details so we can experience it, have a richer experience of life.
Marc: I love that you said that because when developing this all and people start using tape, two minutes things, what you just said is what I noticed people are writing. I'm grateful for my kids. I'm grateful for my spouse and I realized those are gratitude statements. Yes. But they're very need to use the word almost like shallow ones. Right? There wasn't a lot of thought put into that. It was a, a quick answer that didn't require someone to think through it. And even though that's still making a statement, I think thinking about it more is what's going back to your, well, what do you call it when people are paying attention to their surroundings, closing their eyes and listening to things that you talked about and that's a huge one also. Yeah, that's great because another activity that's popular is called the grounding exercise. And what you talked about is similar to a grounding exercise. And what I tell people is, the, one of the more popular grounding exercises is the 4-3-2-1 where you think of four things, you see three things, you hear two things, you feel one thing you smell.
And if you do that exercise, which is again bringing you into the present, the whole idea that to bring you into the present and you look around and, and you think about the, the exercise. So, if I'm looking around, I can find four things. I see easily. That is almost so too shallow on the thought process. Yeah. Too easy. Right. But I tell people when you get to the hearing and feeling and smelling those are more challenging, don't disregard those. Take your time because you taking your time is what makes it more meaningful and valuable to you. The same goes for gratitude, journaling, right? If you can think of, I'm grateful for my kids. You, you haven't put enough thought into that or found something different or unique for you for it to have as much of an effect for you. So take the time to really think about it and that's where those prompts are beneficial because they're gonna ask you questions of things you don't usually think about and ask you why you're grateful for that. So it gets you outside of your comfort zone a little bit.
Laura: Yeah, I love the idea too of like tailoring some of these practices for what you're needing to experience or what you're hoping to amplify. So when I help my one daughter who has anxiety and has panic attacks, we use a grounding exercise that's very similar to the 4-3-2-1. But in it, we select a feeling, a felt sense of safety or love or calm. And she's scanning her environment and looking for things that bring about that feeling. So rather than just, you know, four things you can see. It's four things that you can see right now that help you feel safe.And like grounded in an emotion that you're attempting to elicit in the body. So I like that little tweak when we're moving towards things. And I also love like gratitude practices that are aimed at something that you are having a hard time with. So whether there is a very challenging child in your family, you know, lots of the families that I work with have kids who are labeled as behaviorally challenging.
So really focusing, okay, so I'm grateful for my children. What specifically about this child who I'm having a hard time with right now? Am I grateful? Or, you know, I'm working on healing my relationship with my body. So I have a gratitude practice that is solely related to being grateful for my body, for the signals it sends for the things that it does for me. That goes beyond just I'm grateful for having a functioning body, you know, but just very in a very detailed way. So I like the idea of getting kind of even granular, especially if there's something that is like you've pinpointed, this is the thing that I'm not feeling good about right now, like we can focus on those things, right?
Marc: That's great. And I think to a couple of your comments. You know, it's tough. Social media makes us see the best of everybody and we're comparing ourselves against that quite often, but reality is no one's perfect and you need to accept who you are. There's a, I might get this wrong a little bit. There's a lyric I think by Belinda Carlisle that says all these lines across my face, tell you the story of who I am, which I think it's a great lyric because we all have imperfections but that's what makes us who we are.
Laura: Yeah. And, and it, I, you know, the, the imperfections, the ups and downs, it's what makes life beautiful too. And so I, I love that. We're, as we've been talking about this, we're not talking about ignoring the hard stuff and only seeing the good stuff we're talking about recognizing the richness of life and that the hard stuff is an integral part of experiencing the good stuff.
Marc: Yeah. I think if every day was perfect for someone that life would get actually boring pretty quickly and they would look for ways to almost be self destructive because I don't think it's gonna be healthy for, to, to have a, a life that doesn't have challenges.
Laura: Yeah. And it's so important, you know, before we hit record, we were talking about how important that is for parents to understand as we're raising our kids because of course, we want things to be good for our kids. You know, all we want is for them to be safe, healthy and happy. And there's a very important thing that we have to recognize is that if they're gonna have a full rich human experience, they are gonna have heartbreak, they are going to experience grief loss, devastation like that is part of the human experience. And we can't stop that from happening. And if we do, we would be doing them a disservice.
Marc: We would, that's all very important things for everyone to experience in life. Again, we talked about this. I, I made a number of 380 emotions, but it's good to recognize or experience a lot of those because that's a part of having a full life. Yeah, full human flourishing life. Yes, exactly. And going back to going back to gratitude. So something else I want to talk about that. I've learned through my trials and errors is there's two activities I have found that make a huge difference in someone's mental well being. And when they work together and in my studies, when used together, I have seen 95% of all people have a 200% increase in positivity. Now, first off, how do we rate positivity? There's a questionnaire called the Modified Differentially Motion Scale questionnaire. That's mDES for short, it was written originally by Harold Izard in the seventies and Barbara Fredrickson modified it in the nineties and the idea is, it asks you 20 questions. And those 20 questions kind of rank your positivity against your negativity, it gives you a ratio. So all my participants and there's, you know, I honestly only have been about 33-35 participants so far. But all of them started off by taking the mDES questionnaire that gave me an idea of their baseline where they were as far as positivity and negativity. I then asked them all to start a gratitude journaling exercise.
And for people who knew how to gratitude journal, they just use take two minutes or gratitude journal for people who didn't know how they use the gratitude challenge and take two minutes after 15 days of gratitude journaling. So gratitude journaling I instructed was a morning activity. You want to do it sometime after you get up, obviously. But before your day gets too busy and you just think of something you're grateful for. If you want to write it in pen and paper do so, if you want to use an application do so, you can just take two minutes, do so. But write down something you're grateful for in the morning at the end of the day. After 15 days of doing gratitude journaling. At the end of the day, you start a three good things exercise. And again, three good things is the idea of reflecting on the past day and thinking of three good things that happened to you.
So now for the last 15 days, you're gonna do gratitude during the morning and three good things in the evening, those two activities together for a total of 30 days, 15 days of gratitude, journaling followed by 15 days of gratitude, journaling and 15 days or three good things is where people have a 295% of all participants have a at least a 200% increase in positivity after 30 days. That just means that they've really rewired their brain to recognize gratitude to recognize happiness. Again, it doesn't mean they're gonna be happy every day, right? But it means they've started understanding positive psychology and understanding what it takes to get into a better mindset and recognizing the good in life. And I found that to those two to be a very good combination for people who are struggling with happiness.
Laura: I love that Marc. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. Gosh, Okay, so I love those practices and I feel like I already do them in some form or another, but you are making me want to be more intentional and making sure that those are happening every day. Okay, I'm, I'm excited. Thank you.
Marc: I'm feeling good about the children too. Yeah. You know, as a parent, you can work with your children to do those.
Laura: Yeah. You know, my, my kids like yours know what I do for a living and sometimes they are resistant when I bring like my work into our family. You know. But yes, for everyone else whose kids don't feel resistant to you. Yes, to do those things or even just do them in front of your kid because the modeling aspect of it is wonderful too. And, you know, ultimately you and your life, I'm talking to, you know, to all the parents here, your role here is not just to be your role on this earth. Your purpose on this earth is not just to teach your kids things, right? You are here having a human experience and you know, making it, you have a right to a healthier mindset, to a happier outlook, a more positive outlook like we have a, you have a right and a responsibility to care for yourself.
Marc: Yeah, I tell people you create your happiness, your happiness isn't gonna be created by external factors. It, how it's your interpretation of those external factors. So what do you think that creates your happiness?
Laura: Yes, I mean it, yes. Yeah. To add a certain level of, of privilege too. There's a, there are certainly are external things that impact us more heavily than others. But yes, yes. We have a very powerful brain in our heads that can help us have a better lived experience for sure.
Marc: Absolutely. The brain is very powerful in both positivity and negativity, right? And that we live, we live in a world full of negativity, looking at, news, social media, anything. It's a, it's a world full of negativity. It's really easy to get caught up in that and be defensive, be negative, be in a negative mindset because there's just so much around us all the time and you have to be cautious of that and recognize it.
Laura: Absolutely. Well, Marc, I'm feeling very grateful for what you've shared with us today. I'm so grateful to have met you and to have heard about your work. Will you tell us, before we wrap up where folks can find you and learn from you?
Marc: Yep. Take twominutes.org is the website. I was referencing. There's a way to contact me on the site. You can also contact me at marc@twominutes.org. And I'm happy to, you know, have any conversations around ways people can get into a better mindset. I think that's, yeah, I mean, we mentioned taking two minutes as a nonprofit. I've never made a dime off of taking two minutes and I don't really have an interest in my goal. I feel like my mission is just to talk to people around ways to hopefully find more happiness in their lives and try to share that with as many people as I can.
Laura: What a beautiful mission. Thank you, Mark.
Marc: Thank you. I appreciate being here. Thank you very much.
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All right. That's it for me today. I hope that you keep taking really good care of your kids and your family and each other and most importantly of yourself. And just to remember, balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this!