Cody Royle is the man who coaches the coaches and the author of Tough stuff and Where others wont.

Prof Lara Aknin is the director of the Helping and Happiness Lab at Simon Fraser University. She studies what makes people live happier and healthier lives. What a fascinating area of research and so given the fact that this podcast is all about striving to acquire a greater state of happiness, through fulfilling routines, self-improvement and health and wellbeing I thought it would be more the interesting to hear Prof Aknin's thoughts.

In this episode we ask about the effect generosity has on our levels of happiness.

We ask if people who work in service of others, like nurses for example, we ask if they are more predisposed to being happy by virtue of serving or giving of their time and energies to others.

We also pose the question, does being generous make you happier or are happier people just more generous ?

Prof Aknin tells us about her goodybag paradigm.

We explore generosity across cultures and socio-economic sectors of humanity.

We hear about the generosity of children and what conclusions can be drawn from.

Expect to hear the purpose underlying our desire to give to others.

Plus expect to hear the distinction between giver and receiver centric gifts, something which I think will give people pause for thought before they buy their next gift for a friend or family member.

https://www.sfu.ca/psychology/about/people/current-faculty/laknin.html

https://www.sfu.ca/psychology/research/hhl.html

Dr Michael Steger is the Founder and Director of the Center for Meaning and Purpose, and Professor of Psychology at Colorado State University.

In this episode we tackle some pretty weighty issues. We discuss the meaning of our lives and the philosphy of appreciating the little moments and I reference Matt Haig and his book Reasons to stay alive, in which he catalogues all the seemingly mundane things in life that are sources of real joy.

We define what purpose is and in doing so Dr Steger tells us what he means by purpose being an anchor we throw out into the future.

We discuss the commodification of meaning which Dr Steger is very much against.

http://www.michaelfsteger.com/

Dr Steger's Ted Talk : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLFVoEF2RI0

Sinead Cloherty is a nutritionist, a health coach and an expert in making healthy eating, easy, tasty and fun. Shes mentored thousands of clients down through the years with thousands of followers on instagram, where she shares healthy eating tips.

In this episode I ask why we have such a complicated relationship with the food we eat ?

Expect to learn what what sustainable weightloss is and best to go about it and how it differs from the approach dieters normally take ?

We discuss if we should be keeping track of what we are eating and we ask if eating while watching tv is really a good idea ?

Discover what mindful eating is and how it can positively impact how and what we eat.

From a nutritional standpoint we explore the sorts of foods we should we be looking to consume for a healthy nutritional balance.

Plus we talk about behaviour change and how it influences our ability to manage weightloss.

https://www.instagram.com/sineadclohertynutrition

https://linktr.ee/sineadclohertynutrition

https://www.sineadcloherty.com/

Emily Balcetis is a social psychologist and professor of psychology at NYU and author of Clearer, closer, better. She is fascinated by how we look at things and has performed groundbreaking research showing how we can change our perspective to attain our goals.

In this episode, we hear how how what we see creates our perception of the world around us.

We hear about how much of what we see is in direct focus. How much is in our peripheral vision and the role the brain plays in filling in the gaps, not just in our vision but also in our subjective experience.

We learn how this knowledge about our subective focus can be used in the context of health and fitness to enhance performance, simply by changing how we look at a task.

Expect to learn about how we can sustain motivation and the importance of factoring in the inevitability of obstacles in the path to a goal.

https://as.nyu.edu/faculty/emily-balcetis.html

Dr Baletis' book : https://www.amazon.co.uk/Clearer-Closer-Better-Successful-People/dp/1524796468

Jonathan Malesic is a Dallas based writer and former academic who holds a PhD from the University of Virginia, he is also the author of The end of burnout, why work drains us and how to build better lives.

Jonathan was a victim of burnout himself which prompted him to explore this age old phenomenon. Indeed we discuss the long history of burnout dating back 2 millenia.

We talk about the pitfalls if aligning ones identuty with how you make a living.

We hear about anti-burnout stragegies.

How do we get away from meaning purpose and paycheck ?
We hear about the relationship between burnout and lack of career fulfilment.

We also discuss the societal pressures that keep people tethered to the treadmill that leads them to become burned out.

Jonathan's book >> https://jonmalesic.com/

Dr Alice Pailhès, Ph.D. is an Associate Lecturer in Psychology at

Dr Pailhes' research focuses on the use of magic tricks to study the illusory sense of agency or control. She specialises in studying the subtle factors that influence our decisions without our awareness.

In this episode we learn that magic is a conflict between our rational mind, our beliefs and our emotions. We see a trick performed, and rationally it doesnt make sense but there it is before our eyes and so we are left stunned, scratching our heads searching for answers.

This is an interesting discussion about how our minds work and how we are so very easily influenced by external forces aswell as internal forces and biases, while Dr Pailhes uses the subject of magic to illustrate how the mind operates in terms of it being easily influenced, her observations on psychology apply to everyday life.

https://www.dralicepailhes.com/

Dr Michelle Segar is an award winning NIH funded researcher with at the University of Michigan with 3 decades of experience in helping people adopt healthy behaviours in a way that matches the complexity, the messiness and the unpredictability of everyday life.

She is also the author of The Joy Choice, named as one of the best health books of 2022 by the Washington Post.

In this episode we talk about the power of habits and the propensity of real life and its every day demands, to get in the way of our best laid plans to create new habits and adopt new behaviours.

Expect to learn what a 'habiter' is and expect to learn what 'unhabiting' is.

We learn about motivation and how we can harness it.

Expect to hear about habit friction and what that is.

We also discover what the three key decision disruptors that get in the way of habit formation are.

We find out why Dr Segar doesnt like the term accountability when it comes to adopting new behaviours.

And we discover the impact that guilt has when we fall short of our own expectations.

There is really so very much that we discuss in this conversation and it is a real eye opener for anyone considering adopting a healthy fitness regime this new year, but in truth Dr Segar's thoughts, experience an insights on habits and behaviour change can really be applied to any field not just health and physical fitness.

Check out Dr Segar's book and her research >> https://michellesegar.com/

Nutritional psychiatrist Dr Uma Naidoo is the author of the new book, Calm your mind with food : a revolutionary guide to controlling your anxiety.