How To Be Happy w/ Tia Graham Ep 102

 [00:00:58] Shanenn Bryant: Welcome back to another episode of Top Self. I'm so honored to have with me today, Tia Graham, welcome. How are you?

[00:01:06] Tia Graham: I'm great. I'm happy to start my day with you.

[00:01:09] Shanenn Bryant: Well, you have a TED Talk that you did called The Simple Secret of Being Happier, I'd love to hear, like, how do we do that? But, can you just tell us how you got into talking about happy?

[00:01:23] Tia Graham: Yes. Yes. I was raised by a dad who I've witnessed choose happiness and actually tell this story in my TED talk. And so, I learned at a young age that happiness is a choice and it's something that you have agency over. and I always really tried to design my life to have as much happiness as possible. And when I was having really bad years, I was like, okay, what do I need to do to get back to that?

How I started studying happiness was, I was really struggling with my happiness and wellbeing after I had my second daughter and I went back to work, and I was like, whoa, like what is going on?

With life, with like a toddler and a baby and career and everything. And uh, this is when I discovered the science of happiness, also known as positive psychology. And I started studying it and studying coaching and Happiness at work and so on and, it was transforming me and I knew that I wanted to share what I was learning with as many people as possible.

So that's when I started the brand, Arrive at Happy and started writing and speaking and teaching the science of happiness, and happiness at work.

[00:02:43] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah, it's so hard to stay in that too. I think people really struggle with this. There's so much going on. Life moves so fast. 

And I think that's where the science, you know, the science of being happy comes in because you're saying this is a choice. You actually have to work at it. It isn't just, oh, I got lucky over here or I'm lucky over 

[00:03:03] Tia Graham: I just have the genetics.

[00:03:05] Shanenn Bryant: Just got the genetics. Yeah, you're saying, we have to do things and make decisions to bring that happiness to us.

[00:03:14] Tia Graham: Yes. But a very important part for everyone listening is we all have different set points. So, we all have these baselines based on our genetics and our environment. And some people are absolutely genetically predisposed to be happier than others. Some people, unfortunately, are genetically predisposed to maybe be more depressed.

And so, there's this spectrum of the 8 billion of us, and we all have different set points. it's way harder for some people than others. But what the research shows is that everyone can make it better for themselves. So, someone might be here and someone might be here. Um, it's not just like socioeconomics. It's not an even playing field for humans around the world. But there is a component of choice and agency, and that's really around your thoughts, your behaviors, your responses.

[00:04:17] Shanenn Bryant: Right, right. Okay, so I might be on a, just in general, for a variety of reasons. I might be on a different happiness level than my husband or than, than a friend.

[00:04:28] Tia Graham: Yeah.

[00:04:29] Shanenn Bryant: There are things that we can do though to increase that no matter what level we're on. Can you walk us through one or at least two of those things that we can do? I know we all want to be a little happier in our lives.

[00:04:40] Tia Graham: So, what I'll do is I'll give a, a wellbeing framework and then I'll give three specific things. anyone can do to increase their happiness

[00:04:51] Shanenn Bryant: I love it.

[00:04:51] Tia Graham: So, the framework which I learned from Dr. Ben Shahar is SPIRE, S P I R E, and it stands for, and everyone should write this down or put this in their phone, stands for spiritual well-being, physical wellbeing, which is both your mind and your body. Intellectual well-being, learning and growing. relational well-being is the R and that's the relationship we have with ourself and the relationship we have with others. And then E of Spire is emotional well-being, increasing positive emotions and having a healthy relationship with our painful emotions.

So, there are thousands and thousands of research papers on how to be happier. The research is exploding, and the neuroscience is as well. So, some very practical, tangible things that people can do to be happier is number one, increase self-compassion. So, the being self-compassion is you talk to yourself the way that you talk to your friends and you, you are mindful.

 You meditate. And you also recognize that every single human suffers and that we all go through challenges and that all 8 billion of us are way more similar than anyone recognizes. So, if you can increase self-compassion, and there's a great book called Self Compassion by Dr. Kristen Neff that I would recommend to anyone. So that's, that's one.

[00:06:30] Shanenn Bryant: For that self-compassion part, I think too, it's my guess is we're also all not talking to ourselves in the same way. So, some, one person might be a little bit more negative or a little bit harder on themselves than another. And so, the idea is like, okay, well maybe you can't control necessarily that always coming in or the way that that's coming into your, to your thoughts, but if you can get and maybe intentionally have some being kind to yourself and some positive thoughts in that way.

[00:07:02] Tia Graham: Yes. So, all of us have a negativity bias in our brains because of human evolution and our brains were designed to keep us alive and keep us safe, not to have us feel happy. So, some people, just to your point, have a way stronger negativity bias than others. Pessimistic and negative about the world and about themselves.

[00:07:25] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. 

[00:07:26] Tia Graham: And I know we're going to talk about childhood. There's like so many things that can contribute and emphasize, et cetera, that everyone can learn to talk kinder to themselves and give themselves more compassion. Yeah.

[00:07:41] Shanenn Bryant: Great. So, number one is self-compassion.

[00:07:43] Tia Graham: Number one is self-compassion. I'm going to give another acronym cause I kind of want to, I would say number two is self-compassion. Take your meds, M E D S, and this is not like a pharmaceutical

med. Um, meds is meditation, exercise, healthy diet, and seven to nine hours of sleep a night. So, it's really hard to be happy if you, if you can't be present in the whirlwind of work. It's very hard to be happy if you're not exercising and moving your body. It's really hard to be happy if you're not sleeping,

and it's also hard to be happy if you're not eating nutritious foods. So, I would say take your meds in any way that you can.

[00:08:28] Shanenn Bryant: Okay. So, take your meds. I love it. What's the 3rd one?

[00:08:32] Tia Graham: Take your meds. Oh gosh. So, I have like 10 and I'm like, which one do I choose as another? So, um, the third one I'm going to say, because it's the number one predictor of happiness. This is connected healthy relationships. So, this is investing in friendships and family members where they make you feel good and you make them feel good, right?

It's not like the aunt that makes you feel miserable at the family gathering. Not that family member. 

[00:09:07] Shanenn Bryant: Don't, don't do that. Yeah. Don't add more of that to your life

[00:09:10] Tia Graham: Right, but whether it's your spouse, or your child, or your best friend, or your neighbor, or your work colleague, that's your best, you know.

[00:09:21] Tia Graham: That's the longest study, the Harvard Grant study showed, like, the key to happiness are people that have healthy, connected relationships. So, I would say if you're going to just choose one, That's the one to focus on.

[00:09:35] Shanenn Bryant: Interesting because I just last night saw a clip of Simon Sinek he was talking about friendships and how it only takes someone eight minutes. With a friend so like having a conversation for eight minutes with a friend to feel better about whatever situation they were in so if I called you and I'm like, you know stressed out I'm going through something It only takes us about eight minutes for me to then start feeling more grounded start feeling more relaxed all of that and I thought that's just so interesting because..

[00:10:08] Tia Graham: Yeah, not much time.

[00:10:10] Shanenn Bryant: It's not very much time and you know, I've got a good friend that lives, you know across the country and we always and we're on a different time zone and so it's always this thing because we're like Well, we need enough time to really, you know, have the conversation because it's been so long And so I think the new plan is like no we need 10 minutes and maybe we just need a bunch of those.

[00:10:29] Tia Graham: So also, I just talked to my best friend in Honolulu this morning for, I think, seven minutes. So, you don't need a lot. Yeah. My husband does that too. And I'm like, what call you? And he's like, well, I don't have time. I'm like, it doesn't need to be a 30 minute. Like, and also, I will say this, my friend Ginger has, has turned me on to this and I love it. We send videos back and forth to each other, 60 seconds, she'll be like, I'm thinking of you this, she's in the kitchen, she's doing whatever, 

[00:10:58] Shanenn Bryant: Oh my gosh. I love that 

[00:11:00] Tia Graham: much different than a text message.

[00:11:03] Shanenn Bryant: I'm obsessed with that idea. Um, yeah, it's like, okay, let me do my own reel to my friend, right?

I'm spending time putting stuff on social 

[00:11:14] Tia Graham:  when you're feeling good or when you're feeling not good,

[00:11:18] Shanenn Bryant: Oh, that's so good. Yeah, because at least you feel a little bit connected. All right, Tia, that's on my list. I'm going to start doing that. Thank you for sharing that with us.

[00:11:27] Tia Graham: Yeah, of course. 

And I will say, when people are learning about the science of happiness, it makes them happier, just, just learning about it.

[00:11:37] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. Okay. Well, I want to, you know, turn our attention a little bit because I know that, you know, your parents went through a divorce when you were younger and this is kind of, you know, your dad went through a hard time and then he just decided, I'm going to, as you were saying, do these things to feel happier in my life.

So that really stuck with you, but then you really went through your own hardships and. We talk a lot on this show about when we get triggered, whether that's, you know, our insecurity is triggered, we, we have a jealous meltdown, or whatever it may be from our childhood, from past relationships, or just something in general in life.

You have a pretty amazing story about how your childhood trauma was triggered in your adult relationship. do you mind sharing a little bit of that story with us?

[00:12:33] Tia Graham: Yes, yes. So, my parents separated and divorced when I was around age 10, 11. my father was physically abusive to my mom.so in my first decade of life, there was this feeling not, not a felt safety, right. And, when I became a mom, from the very first day of becoming a mom, I didn't feel secure.

I didn't feel like I was doing it right. I didn't feel, I didn't feel good enough. fast forward at age seven, my older daughter, started having extreme panic attacks, um, where she would be screaming and she was in complete fight or flight and would become, would be violent. So, she would hit my husband and I, try to scratch us, pull our hair, bite, break things in the house. She was in fight or flight. We later discovered that she has a very rare disability and a very rare profile of autism and not surprising, her violent panic attacks triggered my unhealed childhood trauma. And so, when this would happen, my nervous system was on fire and it was impossible for me to stay calm when this was happening.

[00:14:26] Shanenn Bryant: I can imagine, Tia, first you've got this anxiety of kind of like, well, I don't really know how to do it right because maybe it wasn't modeled well of how to raise a child as you were growing up. So now it's like, oh, I've got to try to figure this out. And on top of that, your child is now having these outbursts that seem very familiar to when you grew up .

[00:14:31] Tia Graham: my autonomic nervous system had, yeah, it's like, I've been here before and I don't like it.

[00:14:36] Shanenn Bryant: Right, right. Oh my gosh. And what a difficult thing to go through because here it is like as a mom, you want to be there for your child and you, you want to give them all the love and attention and help that they need and the support that they need.

[00:14:52] Tia Graham: I was unintentionally, I was unintentionally making it worse. And I, I wanted to learn, and I wanted to understand how I could stay calm when she was not. And so, I've been on a very intense therapeutic healing journey so that I'm not, back to your question, so that I'm not triggered, and I now have the ability to co regulate and calm her and You know, our whole household has been transformed so that it is, that is calm, and it is regulated.

And I will say also part of this journey is I have transformed from being very self-critical

[00:15:46] Shanenn Bryant: Hmm.

[00:15:46] Tia Graham: and hard on myself to self-compassionate. And, and massive self-love.

[00:15:55] Shanenn Bryant: Right. Do you mind sharing? Because that's one of the things that, you know, the listener of this podcast struggles with all the time is like, I'm triggered. It could be certainly all different reasons why we're triggered. But when that anxiety ramps up and your nervous system is out of whack and you're in constant fight or flight, we know that causes so much havoc and wreck on your body, on your life, on your relationships.

And yeah, so. What were some ways that you were able then to regulate yourself, um, in that situation?

[00:16:29] Tia Graham: So, I've done healing for my physical body, somatic work for my mind, whether it's EMDR. Neurofeedback, internal family systems, meditation coach, and getting really practical of in the moment, because you know, one happened a couple weeks ago. In the moment, when I'm getting triggered, what I do is I first, Self soothe. And it's like inner, I've done so much inner child work where, and sometimes it's, it's somatic where, excuse me, let's say if I'm getting triggered and I will pat myself the way you would pat a baby, right?

[00:17:14] Shanenn Bryant: Mm. Like as you're, like, burping them, you know, or something in a 

[00:17:18] Tia Graham: And I, and I also will say to myself sometimes out loud or sometimes, in my head of like, you're okay, you're safe. Everything's okay. So that's one. I also have transformed the way, like I said, I talk to myself. So, I will, I will say things to myself like, everything's going to be okay. You can handle this situation. This too shall pass. Nothing is forever. This is just a moment, etc. Right? I do, I have a lot of breathing techniques that I use that I learned from my meditation coach. And there's also a lot of spiritual practices as well. So, um, and this one I learned from one of my autistic parenting coaches where when my daughter is, elevated, Is I, picture a beam of light going from my heart to hers because, she's in fight or flight, right? She's not in a place of lightness and calm. That's what she needs.

So, it’s, spiritual energies. I've also done things where I've like called in angels where I've said, okay, angels, I need you right now. Please come surround me and my daughter.

And I think, I want to say like, this is not something I just could do on my own, right? Because of my childhood trauma, I wasn't like, because my husband would be like, calm down, like, just stay calm. And I, I, I'm like, I can't, like, I would love to, I would love to, but I, I literally can't. And so, if you're someone who can't regulate and calm your body, it's okay. But this is something that you can learn to do, and, you know, for some you might need a professional like me to help you, because I wasn't able, with all the things, with everything I read, I could not do this on my own.

[00:18:31] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah, like the worst thing to tell somebody Like when you're trying to get them to calm down is to calm down like 

[00:19:17] Tia Graham: And I was telling my daughter to calm down, he's telling me to calm down, no one's calm.

[00:19:22] Shanenn Bryant: Right, it's a whole cycle like no one in this picture as calm or even close to calm and we're all We don't know what to do. Yeah, I love that. If somebody did say, you know what, I need to learn how to do this for myself, where can they reach you?

[00:19:41] Tia Graham: I would say if someone actually wants to learn this, that they should find a certified somatic experience practitioner or somatic therapist. for me, what I'm doing is I have a collective called the Calm Working Moms Collective, where I teach and inspire everything that I've used to transform, be, and be happy and at peace and grounded and full of self-love. And then there's a community of women who also are supporting and helping each other. 

[00:20:14] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah, because motherhood is so hard. And thank you so much for providing that community because yes, you know, you take a group of women who all have children, but everybody has different circumstances, your circumstance is going to be different than someone else's. However, having that support and like, hey, this has worked for me.

This has worked for me. Have you tried this? I've, I'm working on this. Even just having that support is so fantastic. And 

[00:20:43] Tia Graham: and not feeling alone. Yeah, like you said, 

[00:20:46] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. Women and mothers definitely need the support of other women and mothers. Right.

[00:20:53] Tia Graham: Yes, yes. women are stronger together and can grow together and can change the world for the better too.

[00:21:02] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah, so good. Tia Graham, I appreciate you being here and thank you for giving us the Science of Happiness, some steps we can take there and also how, when things aren't as happy as maybe where we want them to be, things that we can do to kind of get out of that fight or flight and, and work through that trauma.

Thank you so much for being on Top Self.

[00:21:25] Tia Graham: Oh my gosh, of course. And I wanted to share that, going back to the meds, anyone who's not practicing self-care and who's busy, I put together 30 self-care practices that people can do in five minutes or less. and so, you can grab it at www.calmworkingmoms.com/selfcare.

[00:21:46] Shanenn Bryant: Oh, I love it. Yeah, because we're always like, I don't have time for that. I don't have time for that. Oh, you've got five minutes. You've got five minutes in your day and you're worth it, right?

Thank you for giving that to them for free. I so much appreciate it. Thank you, Tia Graham.

[00:22:02] Tia Graham: Thanks for having me.