On Being Happier: Thinking with Heart and Mind

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Evaluating Artificial Intelligence with both our hearts and our mind’s intellectual capacities reveals unexpected, powerful, and compelling ideas, as detailed in this episode.

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Show Notes for Episode 27

Our social media engagement adds value to our lives, at least that’s what it’s supposed to do. This episode explores some of the hidden aspects of social media that affect our experience and our children’s encounters.

Exercises: Ways to think about the ideas developed in the episode:

1) The episode reviews several ways screens capture our attention, including the power in the machines themselves and the ways advertisers and creators use bells, whistles, and notifications to keep us engaged.

a) How do you combat these powerful pulls?

b) How do you protect your children?

2) Calming and entertaining children are important human activities.

a) How do you see your role?

b) What roles do screens play in your house?

3) Childhood play is an important activity, one that evolves into the capacity to later enjoy our own lives. Screens, the episode suggests, negatively impacts childhood play.

a) Does this make sense?

b) How do you combat this effect?

4) Being able to listen to others, especially during uncomfortable times, allows us to make human connections.

a) What do you think of this idea?

b) How do you work at developing it?

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Physician burnout is a widespread problem, and it can be reversed. This episode shows how thinking with heart and mind opens the door. Reversing physician burnout is vitally important to each of us. We are all patients.

Exercises for interested physicians based on the episode:

1) What would you like your patients to say about your medical practice? How close are you to being that physician? What would you have to change?

2) Should thinking with the heart play a role in medicine? How much of a role does heart-based thinking play in your practice?

3) Do you think there is value in preparing for a patient visit? How would you score yourself? What would you have to change?

4) Do you think you should spend less time in front of a screen during your patient encounters? Could you change this?

5) How well do you control visit time? Are you generally late? How could you get better at this?

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Show Notes for Episode 25

Mental well-being partially depends on how we feel about ourselves independent of our actions. This episode offers ways to strengthen this aspect of our mental well-being.

Exercises based on the episode:

1) Appreciate the idea that you are lovable and deserving of love, independent of anyone’s words or actions.

2) How differently you would feel if you knew you were loved for who you are?

3) How many different ways could you open to love?4) What using love as a tool mean to you. How could you change your life using this tool?

Note: Click this to hear episode 9a.

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Show Notes for Episode 24

Mental well-being partially depends on how we feel about our relationships and our handling of the practical details of life. This episode offers ways to strengthen this aspect of our mental well-being.

Exercises based on the episode:

1) Think about your life’s practical affairs. Do you often feel personal failure when outer events don’t go your way?

a) If this is a pattern, imagine letting go of this way of responding to your life’s challenges.
b) If you see value in making this change, work at implementing this and at healing old scars. Change takes time. That’s ok.

2) Think about your relationships. Do you generally stay in them longer than you should? Do you avoid relationships because you’ve gotten burned?

a) If these are patterns, imagine letting go of them. Would this be better?
b) If these changes would make your life better, examine your reasons for staying in / avoiding relationships. Think about how you’d like to manage your relationships. Once you have a clear idea of the changes you’d like to make, work on implementing them.

3) Develop antennae for sensing when your relationships are in trouble.

Note: You can work at these exercises with a mental health professional.

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Is it possible to maintain differing viewpoints and, at the same time, not lose our human connection? This episode says it’s not only possible, it’s important and provides insights into maintaining these bonds.

Exercises for Episode 23

1) Remember a time when you interacted with a group of people without knowing their political views. Chose a positive experience. This could be a memory of a vacation, a work experience, or it could be from childhood.

a) Split this group into two and arbitrarily assign each to opposing political parties. Would it be harder to play as enjoyably with this political knowledge?
b) Would you interact as freely? Would you enjoy the group less?

2) Understanding another:

How many people understand you … really understand you?
How many understand you pretty well
Do you wish people understood your better?
Do you feel closer to those who understand you?
How many people do you try to understand?
How would you expand this?
What would happen if you expanded this?

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Show Notes for Episode 22

When we use heart and mind to think through our relationships with our partners, spouses, children, and parents we can create richer and deeper connections. We are fully ourselves. It’s the art of living well.

An exercise: review the key points in the episode

Partners and spouses:

• Remember that we chose to live together to enhance our lives.

• Consider regular meetings to discuss the specific challenges of living together.

Spouses:

• Trusting each other with your hearts

Children:

• Raising them to be strong in themselves and

to be caring and compassionate

• When they are out of your house, drop all

criticism about how they live their lives

Parents

• They might still see you as a child. Accept that.

• Allow them to be the way they are. Enjoy them.

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Show Notes

Episode 20: Thinking through relationships with heart and mind (part 1 0f 3)

The following story typifies one aspect of thinking through relationships with heart and mind. It also sets the stage for the next two episodes:

Yesterday a third-year medical student came to my office to work with me. The first two years of medical school are in the classroom. Students learn about the body, in health and disease. They spend the second two years with patients, learning to apply what they’d learned. Pediatrics was his first clinical rotation, and this was his first day.

“Do you know what you want to do in medicine?” I asked

“I think I want to be a surgeon.”

‘How did you decide to go to medical school?”

“The idea occurred to me late in college. I was a psychology major. One day I realized that I was going to be a psychologist because my mom is a psychologist. I respect her so much that I wanted to be like her. After appreciating that, I thought about what interested me. Biology was my real interest, and I knew I wanted to go to medical school.”

“Surgeons can be very impersonal, pompous, even conceited,” I said. Their work, to them, is almost art. They see what needs to be done, and they apply their skill and ability to the task. When I was in medical school, a surgeon’s comment highlighted this attitude. “Internists,” he said, “stand around and talk about problems. Surgeons fix them.”

“You can avoid developing this standoffish attitude,” I went on. “by bringing the warmth and goodness you revere in your mom into your practice. If you become a surgeon with this ideal, you will be a different doctor. You’ll be true to yourself and to what you value most.”

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We can have better, fuller, and richer relationships by using what we learned about about working through our emotions and feelings and applying it to our relationships.

Exercises based on the episode’s content:

Exercise 1:

Remember a time when you were criticized without your asking for negative comments.

How did it feel?

Were the comments helpful?

Did they make you feel closer to the person who criticized you?

Why? / Why not?

Exercise 2:

Remember a time when you were given advice you didn’t ask for.

Was that advice helpful?

Were you happy to receive it?

Did it bring you closer ?

Why? / Why not?

Exercise 3:

Remember a time when you were feeling inner pain and others tried to help by offering generalized positives.

Were these comments helpful?

Did they bring you closer ?

Why? / Why not?

Exercise 4:

Do you commonly criticize others, even when you’re not asked for your opinion?

Do you commonly give advice when you’re not asked for it?

Do you regularly try to cheer up others who are hurting by telling them they are strong or there is meaning to their difficulties?

If these don’t help, are you willing to change?

Practice not criticizing when not asked for a comment.

Practice not giving advice when not asked for it.

Practice holding the space for another. Be with them when they are hurting.

Exercise 5:

Does such holding back seem like a loving act?

Does holding back from unasked for comments and criticisms make you feel better?

Does such holding back build richer and deeper relationships.?

As you practice this regularly, do you feel better? Does it build better relationships? With time, does a place of joy open in you?

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Love uplifts and strengthens. Its power works through everyday life. It’s the art of living well.

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Show Notes:

Episode 17: Working through emotion andfeelings with heart and mind (1 of 2)

Exercises used to review the episode’s content

Exercise 1: Allow yourself to fully experience your emotions.

Exercise 2: As your emotions and feelings arise, note their origins. Are they from past hurts, frustration from present events, or are due to loss?

Exercise 3: Explore the idea that love lives within and that wisdom is another name for love. If love is basic to being human, wisdom is too. How differently would you live if love and wisdom were built your life?

Note: The idea is not to believe these ideas, but to think them through.

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Show Notes:

Episode 16: Trusting life: A spiritual journey

with heart and mind

Exercises for reviewing the episode’s content

Exercise 1: Love is transcendent. The love one feels for a child, for example, crosses culture and time. That’s how it is with love from the heart, the love associated with compassion. Does this make sense to you?

Exercise 2: We are containers for love. If love lives within us and passes through us, we are connected to the transcendent aspect of love. Do these statements make sense to you?

Exercise 3: Wisdom is another name for love. If we love a pet, we treat it with a love that’s thoughtful and caring, a love that’s wise. How has wisdom guided you in your most loving relationships?

Exercise 4: As you look back at your life, do you see times where love and wisdom were at work? If you see love and wisdom behind the scenes in one setting, then love / wisdom has to be present in all settings and circumstances. Could it be otherwise?

Exercise 5: I should be able to drop worry if love is always with me, not because everything works out well, but because I’m not alone. Does this make sense?

Exercise 6: Life is about growth. Have you ever grown through difficult circumstances? Did difficulties ever bring out the best and most human in you? Can you see the possibility for wisdom in challenges and difficulties?

Exercise 7: If we know that wisdom and love are present in the events in our lives — even in our most difficult ones — we can face each setting and situation with calm, presence, and focus. We can be ourselves. Does this make sense?

Exercise 8: We can test the idea that our lives are filled with wisdom and love by taking the leap and living and acting as if the idea were true. If the idea holds, we should feel stronger, more competent, more loving — more fully ourselves. Do the ideas in this episode make sense to you? If so, what’s stopping you from taking the leap and testing them in this way?