Episodes
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#50 The Impact of Awe
We are 50 episodes in and I just want to take a moment and thank all of you who have tuned in thus far, who have offered feedback and words of strength, and of course to express my gratitude to God who has given me the strength and fortitude to continue pushing forward. We’ve been developing our...
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#49 Learning from Experiences of Awe
Last week I asked you to reflect on the wife of a firefighter who lost her husband on 9/11, and how each night thereafter she sat for weeks on the beach watching the sunset. We mentioned that alongside her deep pain, she also felt deep gratitude. And, in addition to gratitude, as she watched the...
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#48 Happiness, Joy, and Pain
We’ve been talking about happiness, specifically during difficult times. I have to apologize for repeating myself, but honestly, because of how much pain there is in the world, I just feel so motivated to ensure that the nuance doesn’t get lost – that we understand that pain and happiness are not...
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#47 Discretionary Gratitude
We spoke last about gratitude, active gratitude, looking for opportunities to express gratitude, and turning inward to touch authentic moments of gratitude even amidst real pain. And just to be clear, these moments of gratitude are not silver linings of the pain. They’re separate, distinct…
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#46 The Connection Between Gratitude and Happiness
Let’s return to the guidance offered by Tal Ben Shahar on how to cultivate appropriate happiness during extremely trying times. This week we’ll talk about gratitude, something that we could probably spend more than a year discussing..which is actually quite ironic, because, what the research on...
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#45 Exposing Ourselves to Pain
In the early days following the Hamas attack, I made a conscious decision to view and even read as little of the brutal violent details. My goal was to know what had happened, but to gain that knowledge from people close to me who I trust, and who could relay such an awful reality with…
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#44 Thriving During Stressful and Anxious Times
I was hoping to restart our discussions immediately after the high holiday season, after taking an initial summer break was motivated by practicing my own advice of limiting the multitasking and late nights, and not feeding the unspoken pressures of needing to “get it all done”. But never in any…
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Bonus Episode: Anger, the Most Misunderstood Emotion (Shavuot Shiur Recap)
Anger is something with which we all grapple, and too often we are told that it prevents us from living a life of happiness. Here is the shiur which I gave over Shavuot broadening and deepening our understanding of anger. Click here for the source sheets.
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#43 Mindful Relationships
We’ve been incorporating ideas about Sefirat haOmer into our study of happiness, specifically exploring the topic of mindfulness. Continuing with this theme we’ll talk about mindful relationships.
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#42 Mindfulness and Difficult Emotions
When we talk about difficult or uncomfortable emotions, we’re talking about feelings like sadness, embarrassment, shame - emotions that trigger us to turn inward. And we’re also talking about emotions like rejection, betrayal, anger – emotions which trigger us to respond outward, towards others....
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#41 Mindfullness as Practicing Awareness
A few years ago I decided to take the plunge and I signed up and paid for an 8 week intensive Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course, an MBSR course. We met at a yoga studio in Montclair every Friday morning for about 3 hours, and the time was filled with a mix of psycho-education (learning...
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#40 Real Mindfulness
...so let’s spend just a few minutes explaining what mindfulness is, and what it isn’t. Because in the past few decades, mindfulness has gained tremendous popularity as both a formal practice as well as a way of being, of living. And as with anything that gets mass marketed, some products out…
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#39 Mindfulness and Happiness
We’re currently working through a fantastic book by Steve Magness entitled: “Do hard Things”, which guides us in cultivating deep, authentic, and long lasting mental and emotional toughness. And for the next couple of weeks, we’re going to deepen some of what we’re learned, by applying it to the...
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#38 Sitting With Discomfort
We spoke last week about the skill, yes it’s a skill, of being able to sit in discomfort. To tolerate hard feelings – feelings like vulnerability and disappointment, frustration and regret, sadness and embarrassment, and many others that fit into this category of emotions that we would much…
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#37 Nurturing Self-knowledge
Last week we concluded with the idea that it takes a lot of inner strength to be able to see reality as it is, especially when you don’t like it and wish it were different. Today, we’ll talk about two critical aspects of nurturing that inner strength.
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#36 Setting Expectations for Success
Think about the following question: When facing a daunting challenge – do you think it would be helpful to downplay the difficulty –to tell yourself that the intimidation you feel is just a façade? That in reality there is no way the challenge is going to be as hard as its being portrayed. Could...
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#35 Mental Toughness Part 2/2
Last week we were introduced to Steve Magness, a world-renowned expert on performance. Magness has served as an executive coach in a variety of sectors; but he’s best known in his capacity as a consultant on mental health development for professional sports teams. Guided by Steve’s book, we began...
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#34 Mental Toughness Part 1/2
One of the popular topics all over the self-help world of books and podcasts, is pinpointing the factors that help people thrive. Looking at what makes some individuals consistently successful athletes? leaders? parents? executives? What do those individuals have, or do differently than the rest…
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#33 Emotional Agility
Join Dr. Shoshana Poupko for a thought-provoking, authentic, honest, and nuanced discussion of Happiness, drawing from Torah sources, recently published books, articles, podcasts, and stories.
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#32 Walking Your Why
Join Dr. Shoshana Poupko for a thought-provoking, authentic, honest, and nuanced discussion of Happiness, drawing from Torah sources, recently published books, articles, podcasts, and stories.
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#31 Default Mode Decisions
Join Dr. Shoshana Poupko for a thought-provoking, authentic, honest, and nuanced discussion of Happiness, drawing from Torah sources, recently published books, articles, podcasts, and stories.
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#30 Gaslighting - Part 2/2
Join Dr. Shoshana Poupko for a thought-provoking, authentic, honest, and nuanced discussion of Happiness, drawing from Torah sources, recently published books, articles, podcasts, and stories.
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#29 Gaslighting - Part 1/2
Join Dr. Shoshana Poupko for a thought-provoking, authentic, honest, and nuanced discussion of Happiness, drawing from Torah sources, recently published books, articles, podcasts, and stories.
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#28 Bottlers and Brooders
Join Dr. Shoshana Poupko for a thought-provoking, authentic, honest, and nuanced discussion of Happiness, drawing from Torah sources, recently published books, articles, podcasts, and stories.
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#27 Tuning into the Body
Today we’ll advance the conversation by delving into the narratives that lie beneath the stories we tell ourselves; the things which fuel those stories. And as you think personally, please try not to judge yourself, please try not to be too hard on yourself, focus instead as best you can to just…
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#26 The Stormy First Draft
If we’re going to be totally honest with ourselves, then we need to state explicitly, that we human beings aren’t really wired for this kind of showing up. In fact, our natural tendency is to do whatever it takes to keep us in a state of equilibrium, of equanimity, and this is true in both the...
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#25 The Four Pillars of Emotional Agility
Dr. Susan David’s four essential components to attaining, and maintaining, emotional agility are: Showing up, Stepping out, Walking your why, and Moving on. These four pillars sound pretty generic and clearly need to be defined, and we’ll do that. But before spend significant time understanding...
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#24 Emotional Agility
Our exploration of emotional well-being will begin with the guidance of Dr. Susan David, specifically through her book “Emotional Agility.” Originally from South Africa, Dr. David is a clinical psychologist and also serves on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. She’s written for numerous...
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#23 Emotional Well-being and Emotions
Contrary to what most of us have been taught, we human beings are much less thinking machines, and we’re much more feeling machines that think. How did we come to believe that it’s good for us to avoid some emotions?
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#22 Emotional Well-being
Sonja Lyubomirsky taught us that up 40% of our happiness can be defined by intentional activities that we choose to engage in. And Tal Ben Shahar gave structure to this by delineating 5 areas that we should focus on. Thus far we’ve discussed 4 of these areas, and today we’ll review what we’ve...
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#21 Well-being and Sleep
The final element of physical well-being issleep. And we all know the bottom line – we need to get adequate sleep. But what I hope we’ll learn today is that getting enough sleep is a REAL need, that is, if we want to be our best selves, our happiest selves. And I think you’ll agree once you hear...
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#20 The Gut-Brain Axis
Growing up, we all learned about the basic food groups and what we should ideally be putting into our body. But how many of us learned about the very real connection between our gut and our brain? Or between our gut and our emotions? Historically, nutrition education and research has focused...
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#19 Physical Well-being
The first step to fulfill our potential for physical wellbeing, is recognizing its inseparable connection to our mind and emotions. Think about the extent that our thoughts and feelings impact our body – how we literally hold our emotions and ruminations in our shoulders, in our jaw, in our...
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#18 Physical and Emotional Well-being
Thus far we’ve covered intellectual wellbeing, relational wellbeing, and spiritual wellbeing. The two final areas we need to explore are physical wellbeing and emotional wellbeing. And while I would love to take credit for leaving these two specific topics for last, it was truly fortuitous. It's...
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#17 Spiritual Well-being and Mindfulness
Remember that slowing yourself down and paying full attention to whatever you’re doing, are key components in the informal practice of meditation; And it’s this practice which can directly increase spiritual well-being.
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#16 Spiritual Well-being
Let’s talk about the third area enumerated by Tal Ben Shahar - spiritual well-being. The first thing we need to clarity when talking about spiritual well-being, is the role that religion should or shouldn’t play in this discussion. We’re going to take the approach that while spirituality should…
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#15 Relational Well-being and Emotional Attunement
Continuing our discussion about relational well-being, let’s talk about emotional attunement. It’s in the context of marriage that emotional attunement garners the most attention, but the truth is that emotional attunement is an incredibly powerful influence in friendships as well as in...
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#14 Relational Rell-being and Empathy
Continuing our discussion about relational well-being, lets talk about two critical elements: empathy and emotional attunement. The sad truth is that empathy levels continue to decline across the globe, some research pointing to as much as a 40% decrease over the last 30 years. What does this all...
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#13 Relational Well-being
Let’s talk about relational well-being. We mentioned last week that when we devote ourselves to deep learning, we strengthen neural pathways in our brain which then get utilized in many other areas of our life, the most important one being relationships. John Gottman, who is world-renown for his…
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#12 Deep Learning
Let’s continue our discussion about the potential for intellectual pursuits to increase our happiness. Remember that intellectual pursuits can and really should include learning new things, as well as deepening the things with which we’re already familiar. Today let’s talk about this latter...
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#11 Intellectual Wellbeing
We mentioned last that Tal Ben Shahar in his book “Happier” lists five categories, five areas, that contribute to the 40% category, the category that gives us some element of control to impact our happiness. Those five areas again are: Spiritual, physical, intellectual, relational, and emotional...
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#10 A Roadmap to Happiness
Today we’ll begin talking about the 40% category of what we can do, deliberate activities, to raise our level of happiness in a real and consistent way. Let’s being with talking about expectations, meaning, if I start doing what the research tells me to do, what can I realistically hope to feel,...
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#9 Feeling Blah
We are almost ready to talk about the 40% category – deliberate activities. Remember that this is the category that offers us the best chance of increasing feelings of happiness. And please bear with me as I continue to stress that increasing happiness is a personal choice that needs to be made…
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#8 Happiness and Life Circumstances
We learned about the impact that genetics have on our happiness set point - recall that it was 50% - and we talked about how its human nature to return to that set point even after experiencing significant positive or negative life changes. This is best understood by the concept of hedonic...
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#7 Happiness and Genetics
We spoke last about genetics accounting for 50% of our happiness set point, and I’m curious if that percentage is in line with your thinking; or were you under the impression that genetics would play a bigger role, or perhaps a smaller one. As we mentioned, genetics is accompanied by…
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#6 Increasing and Sustaining Happiness
With toxic positivity remaining on our radar, let’s now move to talking about the ways through which we can increase and sustain, our happiness level. There are two highly notable individuals who are going to start us off and guide us on this next step in our learning. The first is Tal Ben…
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#5 Toxic Positivity Side-effects
Last week I shared with you that part of me feels anxious spending so much time on toxic positivity. And, then there are the other pieces which know the path to authentic long term happiness, has to travel this road. We have to gain a sophisticated understanding of the things which get in the…
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#4 Positivity vs Optimism
We talked last about toxic positivity, and I encouraged you notice the thoughts and feelings that come up when you reflect on this concept - and I did the same. I thought about my nature of being a realist, and whether in a world often fixated on feeling good, my perspective just brings people…
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#3 Toxic Positivity vs. Real Happiness
We talked last recording about the directive to amp up our joy in the month of adar. And we talked about how this implies that we all have a baseline of happiness to be able to do this. We also asked whether a person can be commanded to feel a certain way. And if so, are those feelings really...
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#2 What is Real Happiness?
It’s convenient although honestly it really wasn’t planned, to begin studying happiness in the month of Adar because of the idea בשמחה משנכנס אדר מרבים when the month of Adar comes we should increase our joy. This statement may seem straightforward and simple, but if you give it some attention it...
About this show
Join Dr. Shoshana Poupko for a thought-provoking, authentic, honest, and nuanced discussion of Happiness, drawing from Torah sources, recently published books, articles, podcasts, and stories.
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