AT THE HEART OF IT – EPISODE 4

DR. MALA KAPADIA

Healing With Indian Wisdom

Join us for this delightful and deep conversation with Dr. Mala Kapadia, Director of the Anaadi Foundation’s Center for Indigenous Knowledge Systems. In this insightful episode, Mala shares learnings from her life-long exploration of traditional wisdom and modern wellbeing practices. Discover how Mala’s work addresses intergenerational trauma and Ecological Belonging, promotes holistic healing and peacebuilding, and incorporates Indian sciences like Ayurveda and Yoga into contemporary Indian society.

After sharing more about this emerging research at the first regional Hearth Summit in India, and in our Higher Education Network, Mala invites to learn about the intersection of spirituality and science, and explore transformative practices that can help us achieve both personal and global wellbeing. Let’s get to the heart of it.

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This transcript has been edited for clarity

Welcome to At The Heart Of It, a podcast where we explore issues at the heart of our world’s biggest challenges and their solutions. We’re on a journey inward going into ourselves, reflecting on who we are, listening to humanity’s collective story. Our guides are the visionary leaders, activists, scholars, and practitioners who are changing the world and whose own inner journeys of wellbeing inspire their welldoing.

Today’s guest brings the heart of India’s traditional knowledge systems to the world of social change. Dr. Mala Kapadia is director of the Anaadi Center for Indigenous Knowledge Systems at the Anaadi Foundation located in south India, where she leads transdisciplinary research to connect with wellbeing sciences from India and around the world. 

She also holds a couple of other important titles, one of which is Principal Investigator for the Indian Ministry of Education’s Indian Knowledge Systems Research Project on happiness and wellbeing. Mala’s work allows her to take deep dives into the unique aspects of Indigenous traditions while finding connecting threads between different cultures and ways of viewing the world – particularly how intergenerational trauma impacts all of us, our cultures, and the planet, and how we can find healing in the wisdom of the past. This bird’s-eye view lends a special approach to her wellbeing and welldoing, and today she’s inviting us to see the world connect with each other and heal from this great height.  Let’s get to the heart of it.  

Madelaine VanDerHeyden (MV): All right. Well, hi, Mala. Welcome to the podcast. Great to have you here. I know we’re a little bit far away from each other these days. I’m in France and you’re in New Zealand. So it’s very late for me, very early for you. So thanks for calling me at this time. I thought we could get started just by you telling us a little bit about who you are and the work that you’re doing at Anaadi Foundation.

Dr. Mala Kapadia (MK):  Sure. I’m Dr. Mala Kapadia, and I work with Anaadi Foundation. It’s a non–governmental organization based in South India, and we do a lot of research and create curriculum based on Indian knowledge systems, my entire journey, Madelaine, has been through various fields from psychology to literature to human resources, Ayurveda, yoga. And I’m happy to now see all the dots and connect them in different areas of research as well as education.

MK: So, we work at multiple levels, we create curriculums, we offer them to different universities from schools to parents to corporates, higher education. We work with the Ministry of Education in India, where at the moment I’m working on a project on creating a wellbeing and happiness framework and index based on Ayurveda. So there is a lot of research  based on my wellbeing and happiness project. We have written a book, a small booklet called Sukha Sutra. These are wisdom on how to remain healthy and happy for school children. It was quite a challenge, right? Schooling for very young children so that the next generation can have more wellbeing and a healthier life. How do you give them the metacognition, metavalues, metaskills? Meta is an aerial view, right? It’s a heightened view, where we are able to connect all the dots and see the intricacies of all the paths. This is how we use the GPS system when we are driving because we don’t know what’s ahead. So, metacognition and metawareness help us understand how we and everything around us are connected. Not only that, but how the cosmos and us are made up of the same stuff. What happens outside happens inside, right? So that’s the first pillar for health and wellbeing. The second pillar that flows is of metavalues. Once I know who I am and how we all are interconnected, how the wellbeing of planet is connected with my wellbeing, that metacognition gives me meta values, and values become a foundation for our character and that foundation gives us skills. So those skills then can be applied in life to be in a state of wellbeing and happiness.   

MV: And so these knowledge systems from India, these different sciences, I know what they are, and that’s why we’re speaking today, but maybe our listeners don’t. So could you start by first sharing what is the Indian science of Ayurveda? 

MK: They describe Ayurveda as a manual of life skill. It’s not just a medicinal system. It’s veda, knowledge of ayu. Ayu is life. And the beauty of Ayurveda is that it is for everyone, so it’s not for Indian people. It’s not for the people from certain regions. But the sages talked about humanity at large. They say that our life has purpose and meaningfulness and to achieve that, there are paths. So the path begins with dharma, so anything that sustains you and holds you together, is dharma. And I felt it’s a beautiful way to look at our life. It’s only psychology has taken more than 200 years to reach positive psychology where Martin Seligman and others are talking about meaningfulness. And here there are sages many, many millennia ago who wrote about how life has to be meaningful for us to be healthy and happy. And then they describe life as hitha, beneficial to self and others, because they always saw life as a continuum. We and the cosmos, we and everyone else, are interconnected. And only when we are leading a life which is interconnected and integral can we be happy. And happiness is, not the pursuit of happiness that we understand today in a modern language, but it’s all about the state of being. It is called sukha in Sanskrit. Su is auspicious, Kha is space. So how do you create beautiful, auspicious space where you live, whether it’s your body, whether it is your mind, whether it’s the community, whether it’s the nation or whether it’s the world? So with all the wellbeing crises that we see today, I realize that Ayurveda beautifully connects the wellbeing of the planet and wellbeing of an individual. It’s a continuum. In Ayurveda, in Yoga, the continuum is very beautifully described. So when I go back to Yoga and Ayurveda as ancient sciences as I said, if we all are integrated, we all are connected, then my energy and the world’s energy are somewhere merging together. And energy as we all know cannot be created or destroyed. It needs to be transformed. So when we look at trauma, what is it impacting? Is it impacting your security? Is it impacting your relationships? Is it about your power or victimhood? Is it about your heart experiencing gratitude or is it about your heart experiencing a closed xenophobic existence where you switch on to a survivalistic mode? Now this is where Yoga and Ayurveda come into play because they have a lot of practices which can help you dissolve these traumatic emotional imprints without wanting to bring them up to the brain, which is not able to cope. And when I say Yoga, it’s not just exercise or breathing exercise or physical postures, right? Because Yoga, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, one of the oldest text of collations of yoga sutras, talks of Yama and Niyama, which are the behavioral codes at individual level and collective level. So unless we practice them, doing breathing exercises and doing postures, will not give us results. 

MV: And in your opinion, Mala. Do you think that with the curriculum that you’re developing, the books that you’re writing, for example, is it filling a need there? Because, I’m just going to suggest some things, and you can tell me if I’m completely wrong, but is the need there because you think that there needs to be more awareness around wellbeing or more connection back with India knowledge systems? A mix of both? Am I getting it completely wrong? Why do you think this work is needed?

MK: You’re absolutely, you’re absolutely right. It’s both right. One, it needs awareness. I mean, unfortunately, in any colonized country, the country and people take very long time to come out of the colonized mindset. And therefore, in India, unfortunately, there was nothing Indian in our education system. When I studied psychology, I was horrified because all of our textbooks were either American or Europe-centric. You know, there was nothing Indian. All the  philosophy is totally missing from the curriculum.  The same with economics, the same with political science, the humanities. So that’s where we realize bringing back the Indian knowledge system, which is not India as a geopolitical boundary, but India as a civilization, ancient wisdom needs to be revived, revisited, and integrated wherever possible. 

MV: Well, I’ll just, I’ll just say just on the topic of post-colonial impact, or ongoing colonial impact, and then bringing in the topic of intergenerational trauma: do you see a trauma response in this dynamic? You know, what is the impact of trauma in educational systems as it relates to needing to bring in more of a strong presence of Indian knowledge systems because they’re not there? Are those two related? Not so much? What do you think? 

MK: Absolutely related because I realize that, let’s say when we say trauma, what is a trauma, right? Trauma is a wound that we carry within ourselves which is not healing. And it’s like, maybe you have a large house and you have forgotten your air conditioning or you have forgotten your tap, which is leaking water in an attic or a basement. And for many, many years you don’t realize why your electricity bill or the water bill is so high. But it’s taking a toll on you. So unless you dive deep, unless you visit all the rooms in your large mansion to locate the problem and fix it, the same way trauma is something that I think all of us carry within us. It could be due to colonization. It could be due to climate change. It could be due to wars. Nowadays we also talk of climate refugees, so it could be due to displacement because of war or climate change. Everything that is happening in the world is impacting us. Quantum science calls it the butterfly effect, right? That even far away in time, if a butterfly flutters  it’s impacting everything else around. Because all of us are energetically connected. Now, unfortunately, as I gave the example of electricity or leakage in water,  the same thing happens to trauma. We have it at a cellular level. However, we are not even aware of it. So what happens? It becomes our frame of reference when rather than respond, we are just reacting to life out of that trauma. So let’s say one of the impacts of colonization as a trauma that I’ve seen in India at least is that anything Indian does not hold value. Anything which comes from the West or is stamped by the West holds value. So if Yoga gets stamped by the West, then we say, “Oh, wow, Yoga is our legacy.” But you’re not ready to own your culture or civilization, right? And that trauma has impacted people going through low self-esteem about who they are and they’ve lost their voice. I mean, I’m here in New Zealand, and unfortunately, I’m seeing the same thing happen to Māori culture here. The way we know of or the way we talk of Māori culture, the values, the wellbeing that it can bring to the world and humanity: you do not really see that integrated in education, workplaces, or their way of living. So, that then becomes colonization, becomes an intergenerational trauma, because I’m carrying my ancestors in my blood, right? I’m carrying my ancestors in my genes. And whether I’m aware of it or not, I’m carrying that in my psyche as an imprint. And that imprint has to be brought to an awareness level to be able to address it. And then there has to be action. It’s not a cognitive thing. It’s a very emotional and experiential thing. So I cannot talk about it in a cognitive way and say, “Okay, I’m free of my trauma.” The trauma has to be dissolved  and therefore, a lot of transdisciplinary interconnections have to be made.  So we look at ancient wisdom, we look at modern sciences, we bring them together, and then we create practices, everyday life practices that help us become aware of our trauma and address them. 

MV: So I’m glad that you’ve brought up this work with the Māori because as you’re doing transdisciplinary research, you’re not only looking at building bridges between ancient, traditional knowledge and modern knowledge. But you’re also looking at cross-cultural knowledge. Different communities and different cultures and the threads in between them. So looking at the similarities and differences – between what’s ancient and what’s modern and what’s from India and what’s from elsewhere – and then talking about practices – practices for healing, but also practices as in rituals, everyday life practices – what do you see is happening in India right now? Do you think that in contemporary Indian society there’s a strong understanding and embrace of how traditional sciences from India, like Ayurveda and Yoga can help with wellbeing?

MK: We talk of ancient or Indigenous wisdom at one you know, one level. And then we say this is modern, right? And a lot of people have this misconception that ancient is outdated. People think modern is more scientific, modern is the complete know-how. Unfortunately, or fortunately, we realize that what is ancient is being rediscovered by many modern theorists. So it’s, we as humanity, we just have to take a U-turn, go back to our own cultural roots, civilizational roots. And I realize that all, most of the Indigenous cultures, they were connected and rooted in nature. I’ve been to Hawai’i. I’ve met some of the kahunas, the wisdom holders. And one of the ladies, I still remember, she held my hands and she said, “You are one of us.” And I realized that she felt that and I felt that because of the Mother Earth. We could have lived in different lifetimes. We could have lived on different geographical locations, but ultimately it’s all one. In all ancient Indigenous cultures, they’re also connected with their ancestors, because all of us are living biographies, right? And our biographies become our biology. So our history, our ancestors, are living within us, not just genetically, but psychologically and spiritually. Ancestor healing is a major ritual in most of the Indigenous cultures, including India. Now, obviously, we really don’t know what our ancestors were going through, right? Beyond a certain generation, we don’t even know our ancestors. We don’t know what trauma they went through. But whatever their trauma, we have inherited it.  Also, the trauma of Mother Earth, right, I mean, when we are saying climate change, climate refugee, what is happening to Mother Earth is impacting us. That’s also an ancestral trauma. So in reality, no, I think India is not doing great on wellbeing at many levels because, you know, the American fast food and industrial revolution, colonization, everything has impacted Indians. You know, India had global universities once upon a time. And today when I look at the youth, their only aspiration to get an admission in an American university, right? So, what is happening at physical level, your lifestyle is compromised, you are not actually living Yoga and Ayurveda in your everyday life. This is where I would love to quote one of my favorite authors from America, Henry Thoreau. And Henry Thoreau had his brother die at a very young age in his own arms. It was very traumatic for him. And that’s where he left the New York or Boston, wherever he lived, and he went to Walden Lake. He built his own house and he stayed there. So this can be one of the practices of reconnecting with nature, questioning the life that we are living at an autopilot mode. And Henry Thoreau said that we are living very fast rather than deep, and in India, I realized that the ideal could be that India becomes the voice for humanity, where, you know, you see the vibrancy of people practicing Ayurveda, practicing Yoga, living their civilizational, cultural values, which is slowly happening, it is slowly happening. I was in North India and I was at a place called Sonipat, which was originally in ancient time called Svarnaprastha, a city made of gold. And I realized that people there are actually living a much healthier life because they are all staying as a joint family. I could see actually two or three, even four generations living together in the same house, which is very rare today, even in India. But that kind of community support… let’s take a simple example of a childbirth. Today, mothers are left alone to fend for their pregnancy days and post delivery days, but imagine when you had a whole community or your entire extended family supporting you in your pregnancy and childbirth. That trauma of childbirth would have got so much reduced when there was support system. So, I was look at India as actually start reliving their own ideal ways of life. Where a lot of community support, a lot of extended families staying together, where the practice of Ayurveda and Yoga was a household thing, where grandmother’s wisdom was the first thing where you went, you know, whether it was your physical discomfort or you needed psychological help, so nothing became a trauma.  It was resolved. It was identified by somebody in the family who had the wisdom, and it was resolved. So today we have coaches, we have mentors, we have psychologists, we have counselors, we have nutrition experts, we have life coaches. In those days in India, your grandmothers held those roles all in one. So, you know, realistically, unfortunately, not every family in India is an extended family, but I would want to really see this coming back all over the world.  

MV: And that’s so nice, that’s such a nice image. And as you were saying, the grandmother would hold all of those roles. And it just makes me think, like women can do everything can’t they!

MK: They do! They do! And honestly, because I’ve been really thinking, you know, prior to the Industrial Revolution, women held different roles. It has nothing to do with gender, but it’s feminine energy, it’s masculine energy, right? So the role of feminine energy was to nurture,  sustain, hold everything together, I was just discussing this with my son that at one level, I’m happy women are having more confidence when they are getting education, getting roles, doing jobs, having successful careers. However, what they don’t realize is that they are actually suppressing their feminine energy. You know, becoming competitive, wanting to be better than a man. I’ve been an active human resource roles and corporates, a lot of senior leadership coaching, developing leaders. And I realize that we are bringing back all feminine energy. Like compassion, empathy, listening. But, we want women to be competitive, we want cutthroat competition. I mean, look at the language. It itself is very traumatic, right? So, yes, we are creating trauma. I think the Industrial Revolution uprooted people from nature. So, nature become a resource to be used and exploited and people became resource that needs to be used and exploited and we didn’t realize that we ourselves became a resource which was exploited by others and we are exploiting others. And this trauma, I think, needs to be addressed because today corporates have to wake up to the spiritual aspect, which is not a philosophical aspect, but I would say spirituality is a basic foundation. And most of the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals are far away from being met. Right. I mean, when we are spending so much money on sustainability goals, climate change, et cetera, what we don’t realize is, we just need to bring back that foundation of spirituality in everything we do. And the moment that foundation comes back, everything will fall in its place. Right now, we have lost the bigger picture and we are all struggling with pieces of puzzles, and trying to fit them here and there. But spirituality is like a bigger picture. And without looking at that bigger picture, we are not able to fit in those pieces of puzzles. 

MV: Well, Mala, we’ve spoken a lot about your views on the work that you’re doing, the different sciences that you’re exploring and connecting across cultures. And that does tell us a little bit about who you are, but we haven’t really gotten to the heart of it. And I’m wondering if we can share a little bit more about you and maybe there’s some personal anecdotes you can tell us about that brings this work to life in your own life. Is there anything you’d like to share with us?    

MK: I can share one of my own personal experiences here. One of my friends was doing a course on craniosacral  therapy. As a part of her course, she had to work on people and heal them and make a case study. So I was one of the guinea pigs for that study. And the first question she asked you know, apart from a lot of other questions, is what is a basic emotion that I feel that I experience very often? Without much thinking, because I knew what I was experiencing, I said sadness. And it has nothing much to do with my personal life or personal trauma. But overall, why is the world like this? Why are people behaving like this? Why are systems like this? Why are societies like this? Right? And that sadness was very heavy on my heart. So this is what I told her. And craniosacral is an energy healing when the healer does not even touch you, but just holds the space for you. And in that space the energy transfer happens and a lot of your own emotions get transformed and channeled. Only in three sittings, I realized that, Oh my God, my sadness had got transformed. Now, if I again use Sanskrit words from Natya Shastra, sadness is called KarunarasaKaruna is sadness in Sanskrit, but Karuna is also compassion or empathy. So, you know, it’s so beautiful that your sadness can actually become an activation of compassion if it gets transformed. Another experience that I’ve personally had is that, one of my friends gave me feedback in college that I kept on nodding my head, you know, I was like a doll when you touch the head and the doll goes like this [like a bobblehead]. There was something, some problem in my neck. And I said, Oh, am I doing that? I’m not even aware. So see, most of our even behavioral gestures, we are not aware. And then whenever I was becoming aware that I’m nodding too much, I would become stiff and my neck would have a lot of pain. So I would give up controlling and I would let my head go wherever it’s going. Now, much later in life, I was going through NLP, Neuro Linguistic Programming Training, and Mick Lawrence, who had come from UK for the program, he asked in one of the sessions on hypnosis if anybody wanted to get rid of a bad habit. I was the first one to jump, saying that I want to stop nodding my head. Now it was, you know, if you look at it very superficially, it’s a very innocent gesture, right? I’ll share in a while how deeply it was connected with my trauma in childhood, of which I didn’t even have a cognitive awareness. So, he brought me on stage, hypnotized me, calmed me, took me back in time. And there I was, way back in second standard, maybe six years young, seven years young, learning dancing. And in Indian dancing, you need to learn to do this neck movement. Somehow I wasn’t able to do it properly. And my teacher scolded me. Now, she was one of my favorite teachers. And imagine being scolded by her in front of others, right? It created so much shame and guilt and sadness  that, it got stored in my neck because it was a neck movement. And then even when I was not dancing, it kept on nodding my head. And trust me, Madelaine cognitively, I didn’t even remember this incident. It was only through a very calm and relaxed hypnosis that this memory came into awareness. And the moment it came into awareness, it dissolved. And people who are part of that NLP program could see a change in me from the next day. Now, two, three things happened. You know, in my life being an elder daughter, I’ve always been the good one, right? The obedient one who loves to get validated by parents all the time, who’s supposed to be a good role model for a younger sister. So I was always very obedient. Also, I was non-assertive because when you’re obedient, you’re also non-assertive. I continued being non-assertive even in my marriage and in my role as a manager in my organization. So obviously everyone was very happy dumping work on me or making me do things that I never wanted to do. But before I say no to anything, become assertive or have my voice, my head was nodding yes. Thanks. You know, so people took me for granted and I could never understand. So that frustration, I got feedback from my bosses and my organization, you are a manager, you need to be assertive.  But it’s again, it’s not a cognitive skill. And what happened after this one  NLP session, the moment my body stopped giving this traumatic response, I suddenly became assertive. It was like magic. 

MV: You leave one day and you come back a completely transformed person!

MK: And I joke that obviously my husband and my bosses were very unhappy because – 

MV: Now you’re an assertive person! 

MK: Yes!

MV: But I mean, I’m laughing because it’s a charming story, but it speaks to, one, how deeply stored all of this is. Like, did you even remember, before this, did you even remember what had happened to you in, in second year? 

MK: No, no.

MV: Exactly. You don’t remember, and then the physical sensation you feel, the before and after, is so strong that there’s, you don’t need any other evidence to know that it was there. You know, it’s so clear. Yeah. Wow. Wow. 

MK: And this is where I feel that, you know, we have to have the holistic practices, right? I mean, for dealing with trauma. And we don’t even know what trauma we are holding.

MV: I feel like your common, your common theme for the conversation today has been, the cognitive is not enough. Stop thinking that the cognitive is enough. Like, get out of your brain, get out of your mind.

MK: That’s, that’s the essence, honestly, because we are not just limited to our brains, right? The brain is just a very tiny part of who we are.

MV: Well, my final question for you today, Mala is related to our motto at The Wellbeing Project, which is wellbeing inspires welldoing. And today you’ve shared about the wellbeing side of things, what that concept looks like in the form of Indian knowledge sciences, like Ayurveda, like Yoga,  and coming to the topic of social change: how do you think that the knowledge that these systems share with us? How do you think they can help us with our welldoing? And that could be for, You know, individual changemakers, it could be for collective humanity, it could be for the planet.  What is the connection there? And if this is your final message to our listeners, what would you like to share with them as we wrap up our conversation?

MK: We all are born out of peace and ultimately we all go, we rest in peace as we say when somebody leaves the body. But unfortunately, we don’t live in peace, right? Because we don’t give peace a priority. Peace and spirituality, peace and heart, everything gets connected, right? Because if these are the permanent emotions we are born with, so the negative ones like anger or disgust or fear or shame, they need to be transformed, right? We are born with them and they need to be worked on and through certain practices, we need to transform them. I was talking about rituals in India, we always, you know, all the prayers ended with saying, Shanti hi, Shanti hi, Shanti hi. Shanti means peace. And in India, every mantra also, or the prayer, begins with chanting Om. If I say aloud Om, Om is creating a vibration within me and outside. So why do all prayers end with saying peace, peace, peace three times? Just one time could have been enough. Then I read a very small booklet which says that the three Ps are invoking peace at three levels: one, individual, myself; two, collective, which is community around me, society, nature around me, my nation; and three is at the global level and universal level. So now when today there are wars happening, when there is so much destruction happening, there is so much human suffering, I realize that working on peace and giving it a priority is very important. So when I started my research, I realized that, unfortunately, most of the Western researches define peace as absence of war or conflict.  Peace is not seen as a positive construct in itself, which in Indian literature, in Indian philosophy, peace is a positive construct. Health is a positive construct. Health is not as opposed to disease. And peace is not opposed to war or conflict. So, if peace is a construct in itself, how do you arrive at it? How do you actually start experiencing peace within? And chanting mantras, I realized was one way. We have to become calm enough to invite peace. And the moment we start inviting peace by saying Shanti hi, Shanti hi, Shanti hi – or you can use a word in your language, your mother tongue – the moment you start experiencing that, giving that a priority, slowly your life begins. Peace is something that we have to focus as an individual and collectively. And when we vibrate at a higher energy  or frequency, it compensates for thousands of people around us. So let’s say if we include this as a part of leadership training, that leader of the organization or leader of a team, let’s say if we train teachers to vibrate right at this level, and if we naturally train our national leaders, international leaders, right, to be vibrating at a certain level, I’m sure humanity will have a greater, much better future. We’ll be more into the wellbeing zone rather than the disease zone, trauma zone. And I think that’s the legacy, if I can leave behind all the threads of, you know researchers from ancient modern, west and east, everything coming together, along with frameworks and practices. I think that’s the legacy I would love to leave behind. 

MV: And it’s such a beautiful legacy at that Mala and perfectly, I think, resonates with the work that we’re doing around ecological belonging and revitalizing and reweaving and bringing in, reconnecting to traditions and knowledge and wisdom from the past. So, thank you so much for allowing us to take a deep, deep dive with you into the world of these beautiful traditional sciences. And for sharing a little bit more about you and the heart of the research and the work that you’re doing. And that’s all the time we have for today, so thank you so much for joining me. 

MK: And to you personally and to The Wellbeing Project because I think they are doing wonderful work. I was in Spain at The Wellbeing Project’s first global summit in Bilbao. And it was an amazing community to stay connected with. I’m connected with some of them even today. 

MV: Oh, that’s so great, Mala. Yes, the community from our first global summit in Bilbao was just fantastic. Well, thank you so much. And we’ll talk to you very soon.

Thank you for listening to this episode of At The Heart Of It. For more news, research, and stories about wellbeing and social change, visit wellbeing-project.org. The Wellbeing Project is the world’s leading organization advocating for the wellbeing of changemakers and for wellbeing in changemaking. We believe wellbeing inspires welldoing. Thanks for listening and see you next time.  

How to Rest: Tips and Lessons From a WorkaholicHow to Rest: Tips and Lessons From a Workaholic

Stories from the Hearth

Reflections From:

Akasby Pante

Correspondent, Talang Dalisay
🌍 Parañaque, Philippines

This blog was originally published by Talang Dalisay, the Philippines’ first youth-led education- and storytelling-focused mental health non-profit and a co-creator of Hearth Summit Philippines.

School has always been stressful. It wouldn’t be school unless it made you want to pull all your hair out because of pure frustration. However, this year, we were faced with a new challenge: online school. 

This new system has garnered various reactions from all kinds of students, with different personalities and learning styles. Some absolutely loathe it, claiming that they have to learn everything by themselves. Others enjoyed the freedom that comes with it, being able to take more control over how they spend their time. Fortunately enough, I am  part of the latter group of people.

You can imagine just how excited I was at the beginning of the school year. I wanted to work out, journal, and read, all these things I thought I would be able to do, now that I had more time before classes. Even so, when school work started piling once again, these plans ultimately fell through. You know, just like every other year. And I thought I could just get on with it. Stick through the sleepless nights and the terrible feeling it left me with the day after. Not be able to work properly that same day because of how tired I was and watch my entire week spiral out of control.

But for some reason, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t force myself to stay up until three in the morning when I knew how it would make me feel later that day. I couldn’t spend my entire weekend working instead of spending time with my family. I couldn’t deal with it.

For a while, I thought that I had become lazy. I was losing my focus and I had to get my life together. I soon realized that my body just couldn’t put up with that kind of torture anymore. It wouldn’t. So I had to come up with a plan to work around it, and preferably soon. Here’s what I came up with and maybe it can help you too.

Step 1: Rest

Drastically changing your workflow will not happen overnight. It takes time and mental energy to change a routine that is probably built upon years of habit. Therefore, if you can, try to take a break from the responsibilities that you can temporarily put off.

Obviously, you cannot let go of school or work, but there may be a few things you can hold off for the time being. Personally, I took a leave of absence from Talang Dalisay for an entire month. The amount of time you take off—as well as the activities you choose to take a break from—are ultimately up to you. For the most part, it will depend on the gravity of these responsibilities, how much time you think you can spare, and how much time you think you need in order to effectively “restart”.

However, the most important aspect of this step is that it will be able to achieve the following. First, it will give you time to rest and recharge. Second, it will allow you to focus on yourself and your improvement with reduced stress.

Step 2: Recalibrate

Now, I mentioned all these things about offloading some responsibilities and giving yourself time to focus on yourself. However, before you take action, there is one important step you need to do first: recalibrate. Change the way you think about your own personal productivity and work. Consider rest and fun as an integral part of your weekly agenda and treat it as if it is just as important as all your school requirements and extracurriculars. Because it is.

If you want to be able to produce quality outputs, the amount and kind of breaks you give yourself must be of the same standard. Doing this will prevent you from getting burnt out and keep motivated throughout the week.

Step 3: Reflect

After changing your mindset, it’s time to think about how exactly you are going to improve your work-life balance. What exactly are you going to change from your current routine and habits?

If you are not sure where to start, try searching online. There are so many videos, blogs, and books out there that can help you and give you a few suggestions. Try listening to their advice and try out their techniques. Reflect on what you think would best suit you considering your working methods, personality, and lifestyle.

It’s important to contemplate upon these things because it will help you realize what you could possibly change about your current working habits. For example, one rule I decided to set for myself is that I am not allowed to work during the weekends unless absolutely necessary (usually when there is just too much to do). This was something I decided to implement after I learned about Parkinson’s law which states that “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. Therefore, if I set a mindset that weekends “do not exist” then I will be able to finish all my tasks by Friday. Doing so has given me sufficient time to recharge as well as give me something to look forward to throughout the week.

Step 4: Realize

Once you’ve set a break period, changed the way you think about work, and figured out what changes you wish to make, it’s time to take action. Realize your plans. It definitely won’t be easy sometimes because as humans, we are creatures of habit. Consequently, it is so much easier to just fall back into our old routine. Nonetheless, you must remind yourself who you are doing this for. You. No one else but you. And you deserve nothing but the best.
As a notorious workaholic, I always thought that loving my work meant putting it above everything and everyone else. However, if there’s anything that the “reset” period has taught me is that my world must not only revolve around one single thing alone. As cliche as it sounds, there must always be a balance.

Before I end this article, I wish to leave you all with a quote. It is one that a close family member sent me during those difficult times which I also feel captures the essence of this piece quite perfectly: “A friendly reminder that “your best” doesn’t mean pushing yourself to your breaking point. “Your best” means the best you can do while being your best you. Get enough sleep, give yourself breaks, listen to your limits. “Your best” is better when you are happy and healthy.

About Talang Dalisay

Talang Dalisay is a non-profit organization founded in Manila, Philippines centering on mental health for our fellow Filipinos.  We are a young community of storytellers and change-makers, opening conversations on the current mental health stigmas in the country as well as aiding in the integration of persons with disabilities (PWDs) as members of our global community.

Our mission upholds the values of empathy, compassion, and empowerment. We aim to focus on action oriented projects that center on moving towards a society that validates the mental health and neurodivergence of Filipinos. We acknowledge that mental health is a systemic issue — it is an ever-changing and controversial topic especially as a BIPOC community. Thus, through our art and stories, we hope to create a higher consciousness and understanding of how to create inclusive spaces for all amidst these intersectionalities.

Our vision as an organization is to become a stepping stone for Filipinos to create spaces of inclusivity. Collectively, we hope to amplify the individual’s potential to shine purely; living in authenticity, truth, and purpose. Through our projects in elevating the mental health discourse, we hope to be one of many facets that encourage others to create more avenues for positive change, always embracing the ability in any disability.

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AT THE HEART OF IT – EPISODE 3

KIM POLMAN AND

ANTHONY BENNETT

Values for a Life Economy

In this thought-provoking episode featuring Kim Polman and Anthony Bennett from Reboot the Future, we explore the timeless principle of the Golden Rule to foster social change and collective wellbeing. Mixing ancient proverbs, modern science, and imaginative stories, we discuss how humans are hard-wired for connection and the lessons nature can teach us about sustainable development.

Building on what Kim shared at the first regional wellbeing summit for social change in Belgium alongside Satish Kumar, we reflect further on how respect, reciprocity, and kindness can be the foundation of our wellbeing future. What are the universal values that connect us all and can empower our social change mission? Let’s get to the heart of it.

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LISTEN TO EPISODE 3

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From This Episode

Full episode transcriptFull episode transcript

This transcript has been edited for clarity

Welcome to At The Heart Of It, a podcast where we explore issues at the heart of our world’s biggest challenges and their solutions. We’re on a journey inward going into ourselves, reflecting on who we are, listening to humanity’s collective story. Our guides are the visionary leaders, activists, scholars, and practitioners who are changing the world and whose own inner journeys of wellbeing inspire their welldoing.

Have you heard of the Golden Rule? There are a couple different ways you can say it, but maybe you’ve heard it like this. Treat others the way you want to be treated. Today’s guests are taking this simple idea of reciprocity, respect, and kindness and using it as a lens for social change. 

Reboot the Future, where Kim Polman is co-founder and chair, and Anthony Bennett is CEO, is envisioning a world where we treat others and the planet the way we want to be treated. Guided by the ancient essence of the Golden Rule, their educational and advocacy work invites us to reflect inwards on our values so that we can envision the outer world we wish to create.

Whether in speaking to business leaders, school teachers, youth activists, or artists, the universal message of the Golden Rule resonates with everyone. We sat down with Kim and Anthony to hear about how the complex nature of social change can really be boiled down to this simple phrase: treat others the way you want to be treated. Let’s get to the heart of it. 

Madelaine VanDerHeyden (MV): All right, here we go, welcome back to At The Heart Of It, the new podcast from The Wellbeing Project. I have the distinct pleasure today to be joined by our friends from Reboot the Future, Kim Polman and Anthony Bennett, who are here to speak with me about all things related to values for life economy, The Golden Rule and collective wellbeing. Kim and Anthony, it’s great to have you here. Why don’t you introduce yourself and tell our listeners about your work? 

Kim Polman (KP): Hello, I’m Kim Polman and I co-authored a book called Imagine Yourselves, Visions of Transformation at the end of 2016, and that led to the formation of our charity, Reboot the Future. 

Anthony Bennett (AB): Hello, Madelaine. Nice to be with you. I’m Anthony Bennett. I’m the chief executive of Reboot the Future, which was my real honor and privilege to do so. And yeah, I joined Reboot the Future just four years ago and I joined Reboot the Future on the first day of the pandemic. So it was the first day in lockdown, and it was also my birthday, and also I had COVID. 

MV: That’s definitely a triple whammy there. But what a nice birthday gift to be entering into a new job, a new organization, of course you met Kim.

AB: So, when I first came for an interview with Kim, Reboot the Future sounded like a really good name for an organization, but I think in COVID it definitely became a really good name for an organization.

MV: Well, Kim we met you at The Wellbeing Summit in Brussels last November. And you shared a little bit about your work with Reboot the Future, but really spoke to us about the fundamental concept that Reboot the Future is based on, which is the Golden Rule. So first, why don’t you both tell us a little bit about the mission of Reboot the Future and what do you do, and what needs in society at large are you looking at with your organization? 

KP: Well, I started to think about the Golden Rule seriously, it was probably 2014 or so as a guiding principle that everyone should really be aware of. 2015 was an important year for the world because that was the year the Sustainable Development Goals were agreed upon by the UN and it was also the Paris Climate Agreement, which had finally reached some sort of serious level of international agreement. And it was also the year that the Pope published his encyclical on climate change. And, even though I’m not Catholic, I did read this encyclical. It was very interesting document in which he asks every citizen of the world to think more about the planet, about other life on the planet, and not just human life. And because we live in such a hugely complex world, I’m probably a simpleton, but I thought, you know, the world needs some simple idea as a motivational principle. The SDGs are very technical. But what’s the motivation behind them? And so this Golden Rule is quite universal. It’s in all religions, at the root of all religions. A Christian version of it is “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. The Jewish have another version which is “don’t do to others what is hateful to you”. And so, recognizing that this is thousands of years old and then listening to what the Pope asks of the world’s citizens, we added the planet to it. So it’s “treat others and the planet as you would wish to be treated”. So the need that we’re addressing is, increasing polarization and division in the world, serious mental health issues, and kind of a lack of values, an awareness of what our common values are as humanity. So, this simple principle really summarizes the basic values that tie us all together. That was really what I started to want to do: to spread that simple principle, try to reduce the complexity of the world to something that people can grab onto easily and remember easily, no matter what age, no matter what anybody is doing in their lives. But it’s a kind of a daily guide for making the decisions that we make every day and how we live our lives.

MV: Thank you so much, Kim, for that background, that story. Anthony, is there anything else that you wanted to add to that?

AB: Yeah, so just to pick up on what Kim was saying there. So we live in a very information-dense world. And it seems that even though through our devices and the internet and our technologies, we have more access to data, to culture, to content, to all kinds of information. And yet trying to pick a route through that is really, really difficult. And it’s a really dense thicket that people have to traverse morally and ethically and sustainably. So,  from when I first met Kim, when I came to Reboot, it seemed to me like a really elegant precept, a really simple tool, which can lend itself to all kinds of complexity if you so choose. But the key aspect of it is that it is embedded in every culture. So it’s not about you know kind of western ideology that’s being imposed. You can find it in Confucianism, you can find it in Ubuntu, you can find it in multiple secular traditions as well. So the beauty of it when I came upon is it wasn’t that there was something new discovered here. It’s actually super old, super timeless. And you can see that some version of this idea of reciprocity has been embedded in every place ever that has had a civilized society. And so you can say that the Golden Rule is the original operating system of civilization. And what do you do when your operating system crashes? You reboot it. So this is the simple point of, re-engagement that every society can default to this this kind of factory setting. So as soon as I heard it, I recognized it. And the beauty of doing this work is we hear, you know, multiple people, multiple institutions and organizations who are coming at this from their own trajectory, but aligning upon the same realization, this idea of reciprocity. And then by extending it to the earth, I think we’re doing something really important as well. There are 17 SDGs. As Kim said, they’re very technical. And I think to give people that kind of simplicity of tool that they already recognize in an effort to pick their path through what is a very polarized world, is fundamental. In the United States and in the UK, irrespective of one’s political sympathies, you can recognize that we are deeply polarized just now as a society, and that large swathes of our communities have simply lost the ability to talk to one another. So this idea of putting other communities, other people first, but also putting the earth and its resources as part of that dialogue is, I think, just a deeply useful tool to take forward.

MV: What I find so interesting, and thank you both for those two explanations, but one of the things that feels really profound to me as you explain one, the universal human values that are held within the Golden Rule, whether you say it in one phrase or a different phrase, or whether it’s repeated in one side of the world or the other, it’s something that’s universally human. And you’re explaining that the sort of inspiration for coming back to the Golden Rule and having this be the guiding light now is in response to the polycrisis we’re facing today. In the 21st century in the technological digital era, do you see any sense of irony that, you know, the key that you’re looking at using to unlock a new future is actually something so old and so ancient that predates all of this? What are your thoughts on that?  

KP: Well, I think because of this technology and how materially focused our society is, the consumer society has a promise of happiness, but it’s actually not bringing us happiness and contentment. It only brings divisions. We’ve lost that connection with what is really the most important thing. And fortunately there’s this awakening going on right now. Many of us, we’ve been meeting a lot of these other people who were trying to get people to get back to the basics of what is really important to life. And it’s as simple as love really. And that’s what we all need and want. Obviously we need to have enough to eat and shelter on our heads, but beyond that basic level of needs that are met, we get lost in all this technology and everything. And so what we’re really trying to do is get people to get back. So we have a story called the map about the imaginal cells, and it’s a metaphor with what’s going on today that gives it perspective. And so the caterpillar represents an old way of doing things. Which is the economy as we have developed it very exploitative, very competitive, very focused on me, my, what I want and I’m told what I want as well. So that caterpillar eats and eats and eats. And then he goes into his cocoon and starts breaking down. But inside the caterpillar, dormant are these imaginal cells that hold the identity of the butterfly. So, when the caterpillar is decaying, that ignites this imaginal cell, which is innate, as I said, but the caterpillar doesn’t like it, the old way doesn’t like this new way, and so starts to attack this new way, these imaginal cells. But the imaginal cells, they emit a common frequency and they cluster and find each other and then the caterpillar disappears and out comes the butterfly. So it is this idea of this butterfly is innate, just as the Golden Rule caring for others is innate in all of us. And we just have to tap into that core part of humanity. In fact, it’s a quality of all mammals because we give birth to babies that are helpless. They don’t survive more than a few days without their mothers nourishing them, nurturing them. So it’s that caring part is so fundamental to who we are. And what we’re trying to do is really activate that.  

AB: I’ll give you some examples of how this manifests itself in real time. There’s a professor of neuropsychology at Rockefeller University in New York called Donald Pfaff, and he wrote a book about the Golden Rule in neuropsychology. And he was on the New York subway one day, and he saw somebody fall onto the tracks. And, you can imagine the scene and he and most other folks there just froze. In the sense of what would you do in that situation? And then in the split second where he froze, somebody else jumped onto the tracks and recovered this individual and dragged them back onto the platform. And at that moment, Pfaff realized that we are hardwired for cooperation. We’re hardwired to look out for each other. There was no rational reason why that individual would completely disregard their own self-preservation, put themselves in harm’s way in order to look out for somebody that they didn’t know. There’s something very important that is inherent to our survival as a species where we look out for each other, but we can forget that. Again, especially in this period of history, it seems like we are atomized and completely thinking about our own, selfish individual needs and desires. But actually the basis of our survival is about cooperation and about looking out for each other. You can take a very simple act in order to look out for the wellbeing of others. And in the big macro level I would extend that to the idea of the just transition. The idea that the Global North and the Global South are in this together and that there is every danger that we try and move to, a new paradigmatic shift for a sustainable planet in which people in the Global South, as ever, are expected to do most of the labor. And they’re also meant to not dig or tunnel or extract the carbon and fossil fuels under their own territories and to sacrifice that. So in order to move to a genuinely sustainable planet, we have to rebalance and recalibrate the relationship between the wealthy North and the poorer nations of the South, and rethink what that relationship looks like. And I think that’s a genuine example of treating others on the planet as you wish to be treated. A lot of the presumptions about where we go next on this thing are about people in the Global South making all the sacrifices in order to preserve the standards of living that we acknowledge and accept here in the West. So I think, again, it’s about trying to envisage the needs and the wishes and the lives of the people in every part of the planet as being equal and that we are co-pilots and partners in this thing. So for me, the Golden Rule is something that you can bring in on a very personal, intimate level to your own kind of, you know, family life, your own kind of personal relationships, but it’s also something that affects on the bigger level, big macroeconomic institutions too.

MV: Well, thank you both. And Anthony, at the end of your last response, you were hitting the magic word of wellbeing that we love here at The Wellbeing Project. But both of you were leading into part of the conversation I’d really like to have, which is how the Golden Rule is deeply interconnected between concepts of individual and collective and planetary wellbeing. And as you’re talking about, how, for example, the caterpillars transition into the butterfly or the baby that’s being cared for by its mother or the future of humanity and cooperation between the global North and the global South in a just manner, it’s all about relationships, and the dynamic in between the relationships, whether that’s on an interpersonal level, or on a more systemic macroeconomic or political level. And just for the benefit of our listeners here, I wanted to read two things from your book, Values of a Life Economy. Of course, you both know these two things that I’ll share, but I wanted to make sure that our audience have them as well.

One you’ve written that, “The Golden Rule leads us to recognize the sacredness and fragility of the world and to treat the earth and its species with compassion. Ultimately, it leads us to promote a life economy. A system that works towards the wellbeing of all life on our planet.”

And then you’ve listed ten values that you explore in the book that I guess you could say, maybe are the foundation or help create the space in which this life economy can thrive. And I’ll just read them very briefly, but it’s to love each other; to have compassion and empathy; to love the earth and be good stewards; to find balance; to listen and empower the youth; to promote education and good citizenship; to act as a good ancestor; to build a life-centered economy; and to work in partnership. So looking at all of these values and looking at what you see as the deep meaning behind the Golden Rule, and that’s on a more emotional level, maybe more spiritual or philosophical level, but then also on a more practical level: how do you see the Golden Rule guiding us when it comes to wellbeing for social change, where do you think it’s taking us?

AB: So I would point to one of those values. There is balance. And as I was thinking about this word, wellbeing, what does it mean to be well, and there’s obviously different applications of that word, but the ones where it seems to be most readily applied is the idea of wellness as sufficiency. So if I say to you, I’m doing well, it means I’m doing well enough. And similarly, if I say to you that somebody is known well, it means that they are known to a kind of sufficient level, and I think this idea of sufficiency is key, that we’re acting within an appropriate level of boundaries. It makes me think of Kate Raworth’s Donut Economics. And wellness is something about having a balanced appetite for life and balancing of one’s own personal appetites and desires versus those of sufficiency. The obvious, direct example of that would be not consuming resources, either food or energy or anything else to a point where it becomes destructive for yours or oneself. So I think for me, that’s the key concept where there’s an optimal point that we can hit in terms of what’s best for our own spiritual and psychological growth and nutritional growth and biological growth and everything else and what’s optimal for everybody else in the rest of the planet.

KP: Yeah, so for me, the Golden Rule takes us to something even simpler, which is every day whatever we’re doing, are we being helpful or are we being hurtful? Just a very practical example, let’s just talk about vaping: vaping is the exact opposite of anything we should be doing for the life economy. It was not designed with any environmental understanding the effects that it has on the earth and the production of it with lithium batteries, and then the disposability of it, and then the colors and marketing of it to young people. It was built as being safer than cigarettes, healthier than cigarettes, but it’s actually not, it’s more toxic because of all the chemicals in it. So it’s completely opposite of wellbeing on all aspects of this particular product. So, we have to ask ourselves in any one of those capacitors, the investor, the designer, the factory, all of these, what is it that I’m working on every day that is helpful? And what is harmful? We must be honest about this question. And it requires a completely different set of questions that businesses should be asking themselves. For example, not only businesses, but businesses are responsible for producing everything that we use in this world and consume, so they are very, very responsible. But it’s also how we behave in our daily life, how we relate to each other. So, that for me is really the key question. Are we being helpful or harmful?

AB; Yeah, I’d add to that. I mean, I think that the vaping thing is really interesting because if you think of tobacco in its natural organic form, tobacco was used as a sacrament by Indigenous peoples in North America. And it was used on a very occasional basis for rituals and traditions and ceremonies. And it was used as a meditative process with other members of the community. So compare that against how the big tobacco industries have ruthlessly extracted harvest and accelerated the addictive qualities of that substance. You could point to a similar history of, cocoa and chocolate, right? Which was again, originally, a kind of religious sacrament to be used sparingly and at certain times with certain purposes amongst the people who cultivated it. Which has now become, you know, an ubiquitous product which is harvested at a completely ecologically dangerous level and you know, modified with vegetable oils and sugars in such a way as to turn it into actually quite a destructive consumer product as well. So the substances themselves aren’t inherently iniquitous. It’s about how people deploy them, harvest them, cultivate them and market them.

MV: Well, I think the path that you’re going down to talk about the environment is really interesting and I want to come back to that, but maybe just one final question on the interplay between the individual and the collective. Of course, you know, the Golden Rule is beautiful and it’s aspirational. And for example, Anthony, in your example, you gave up the person who fell on the subway track in New York is an example of how humans are hardwired to be in community and be connected. But I’m sure we can all look at our own lives and think of shifts and changes we want to make in our own lives that we know might be for the benefit of others, but might cause us to be a little bit out of our comfort zone, or we might have to spend a bit more money, or we might have to humble ourselves a little bit. What’s the dynamic there between the individual and collective then when we maybe come to a wall and think, my life would really have to change if I wanted to do something or if I wanted to act in a way that’s really, really helpful and not harmful?

AB: Well, first of all, I don’t want to be pejorative about New York. But I’m reminded of, a movie called “Crocodile Dundee”. And at one point somebody comes to New York and asks how many people live in New York. And he gets an answer, 8 million people. And the guy says, well, 8 million people in New York must be the friendliest city in the world. And of course, that’s the joke, right? Because nobody thinks of New York as being so nice, but when you think about it, for any number of people to live together in a community like New York or London or anywhere else, there have to be a billion acts of kindness embedded into the system every day. That actually these are places of real flourishing of kindness, which is so commonplace actually becomes banal and invisible. And I think that’s, a useful way to think about, how many of those acts of kindness have just become so commonplace that we embed in it in our operating system just to get by. So I continuously remind myself with gratitude about that, that the big visible acts of cruelty are so egregious. And seems so exceptional because they are exceptional. 

KP: Actually, I agree with you. It is the exception to be violent it just gets a lot of attention and it can be so destructive. I’m always trying to find the answer to why, it is so hard to build something up and so easy to destroy it. But because it is so easy to destroy it, it’s just a cautionary note that we need to be even more careful and do ask this question more often, am I being helpful or hurtful? And I’ve gotten very interested in farming lately and the health of the individual is just really important for a collective health. And so this little analogy is I’ve learned a lot about soil lately. Dirt, in fact, dirt has a bad connotation, you know, like washing ourselves and cleaning our clothes and we don’t like dirt. But in fact, it’s soil that is growing our food. And you need to have really healthy soil and the healthier the soil, it is, the more undisturbed it is the more it holds moisture and all kinds of things. So you plant your seeds in this healthy soil and you get a healthy plant. And that plant is then durable, sustainable, and it can withstand the heat and the challenges that come to it. So a pest can come in there. They can withstand it. Trees even have this power to produce a chemical that will ward off the pests that would attack it. And then, it produces, of course, a much more nutritious fruit or vegetable. And that then is given to the animals to eat, given to us humans to eat, and so the healthier the food is, the healthier we are, not just individually, but we all become healthier. It’s collective health. That’s what I mean. All connected. That’s what we really need to understand. And this is the inspiration of nature. At Reboot, we talk a lot about nature and our connection to nature and how we can be inspired by nature.  

AB: I can add to what Kim’s saying here so there’s a guy called John Higgs who talks about how in the 20th century, you had two dominant models of ideology, right? And one was the West and the individual. And the other one was communist Russia and the idea of the state. So you had the individual versus the state. And you either were the triumphant hero of your own story or you were part of the collective. And those were the two binary opposites between which we have bounced for much of the 20th century. And then in 1989, Soviet Russia fell and it seemed like it was the triumph of the individual that that ideology was now triumphant. And I think we’ve seen over the last 20, 30 years that simply putting the kind of selfish concern of the individual foremost isn’t sufficient. It’s kind of leading us off the edge of a cliff. And what Higgs proposes is that there’s another model, which is one of the network, and actually, you realize that your power what makes you powerful, is your ability to flex those networks. And to Kim’s point about the ecology and the mycelium networks, the idea is that if you look at where these underground embedded symbiotic networks exist, it seems to me a much more healthy and also agile way to think about our relationships as individuals and our families and our communities and our working lives. so it needs more work. It’s not quite as reassuring as knowing that you’re either, you know, Superman or part of the collective. But I think there is something in there, that these networks start to emerge and you can recognize people across them and start to build a different kind of structure that brings forward a wholly more sustainable and attractive paradigm. 

KP: Yeah, I think, I think just to emphasize that point, Anthony, that you are never alone.  Even if you’re just one person living on an island, you know, all by yourself as a human being, you are connected with that environment because you need to eat and sleep somewhere safe. But you think of also the drops of water that make up an ocean, every drop is important. Because if you didn’t have all those drops, you wouldn’t have an ocean. So parts of that imaginal story is that the cells, when they’re innate, they are dormant in the caterpillar. They have different identities. So one’s the wing, one’s the color, one’s the eye, you know, that kind of thing. And they form the whole. So we may be just one, but we’re one important one next to the next important one and the next important one. And we’re all part of this system.

MV: Well, it’s amazing to me that I think every single metaphor you’ve shared so far during this conversation has been a metaphor connecting human relationships with existing relationships in nature, whether that be between organisms or just the life cycle of a plant, for example, that to me is also proof that we are all connected. That mirroring of behavior is one in the same. And we’re exploring at The Wellbeing Project, we’re exploring this concept of reconnecting and remembering how the earth does not belong to us, but we belong to the earth: Ecological Belonging. And in a very similar way that you are looking at the Golden Rule as unlocking something new and innovative in the future, we also see sense, how going back to square one, reconnecting with this intuitive organic relationship we have had with the earth is then one of the major levers in solving or getting out of this poly crisis that involves such environmental and ecological destruction. And what you say about the network approach, I think is really interesting as well. That sense of adaptability gives you flexibility and creativity and innovation for how we might be going about doing that. We’ve seen as you touched on both of you touched on that. There’s been a pattern of behavior, of binary set of way of thinking in the past that’s led us to where we are today. So having that openness to try new things and to act in a different way, look at the world in a different way is really, really important now. So I wanted to ask you what are you working on now that aligns with this idea of  going back to the beginning, going back to square one, reconnecting with that relationship with nature that we, for the most part as a society have lost. 

AB: Well, we center on education, culture, and leadership, and we embed our values in the Golden Rule across all these three different programs essentially recognizing that as we say, the SDGs, they work with the hemisphere of the brain, which is rational and technocratic, and we want to look at the ways in which we communicate the golden rule and the SDGs through the empathetic way. And the intuitive and to some extent or not, though the word always comes back is spiritual. So we have a network of 18,500 teachers and educators, the majority of whom are here in the UK, and we publish a platform called Global Dimension in which we provide free to air resources for all those teachers around how do you smuggle sustainability and values practice within to whatever your discipline is, and we ran a survey of  members of that teaching community, asking them  what kind of teaching practice do they need?  How do you want to prepare your students for a sustainable economy? What kind of lesson plans, what kind of jobs do you want to direct young people to? What was clearly evident was that teachers really want to talk about values. They want to prepare young people for a sustainable vision of the planet, but they don’t feel that they’re resourced. So we published that report, we took it to COP in Dubai. We took it to Anthropy and other events as well. And for this year, we want to work with that teaching community to see, how can we drive that reform within the national curriculum? We are embedded here in the UK, but we also work with partners around the world who are doing similar work in their own curricula, because, of course, you can’t talk about this stuff in isolation, and we have partners now in India, Saudi Arabia, in Paris, we’re not the only people working in this space. Looking at what are the motivations for current classroom practice, but also what will we need in 5, 10, 15 years. My own conviction, not necessarily Kim’s or Reboot’s, but my own feeling is that it’s going to be really tough for us to stay within 1.5 and we probably need to start to prepare for that. And  if we’re not going to stay within 1.5, the next best thing we can do is to start to prepare young people for the world that’s going to come. And I don’t want to couch language or use word that’s apocalyptic or negative or pessimistic. I think we have every technology and every resource we need to create that sustainable vision for the future. We just need to get busy with it right now. And students and schools and the teaching professions are the way that we’re going to do that. I say we have 18,000 plus teachers, that every one of those teachers is a conduit to 30 young people. So we take that point that looking after the interests and nurturing that community of teachers is absolutely central to preparing the world for a  sustainable planet. 

MV: Well, I just absolutely love and admire what you are focusing on with preparing the future generation. Empowering the youth to be aware and involved in what’s happening and giving them the resources as well to take action is also very important and it reminds me of Kim’s metaphor as well with the plant growing in the healthy soil the environment in which we act is really, really important. And we’re getting to the end of our conversation here with both of you. And it’s been so illuminating and I just wanted to end by asking you going beyond what I know is already at the heart of your work, which is the Golden Rule for each of you, what is your main motivation, inspiration, or message for the world. Anthony, I liked what you said about not wanting to use language that’s so negative and both of you sharing that there are billion acts of kindness happening around the world, but it’s just maybe the scary things or the really negative things that get the most attention. But coming from a place of hope, or of inspiration, what is driving both of you to do the work that you’re doing?

KP: A deep caring. And my message would be just be grateful, grateful for all the goodness that is around us and that we have in our lives. I would also say if you see something and you’re really moved by it and that’s kind of epiphany, like, wow, I really want to work on that, act on it, have the courage to act on it. We do all have a responsibility to do whatever we can in whatever way we can to improving ourselves first, and our families, our friends, our communities, and then that ripples out to the world.

MV: Another natural metaphor there with the ripple effects! Anthony, over to you.

AB: So I would 100 percent subscribe to Kim’s gratitude, we are super empowered in a way that previous generations could never have dreamed of. And we should be grateful for that. And the last thing I would say is that what will lead us to catastrophe is the idea that we are isolated and disempowered and we don’t have agency. And there’s a, there’s a Scottish environmental campaigner called Alistair McIntosh that I like to quote and he’s been active for a great many years in this space and his phrase is, “you dig where you stand,” which means you look at where you are in the universe and realize that your contribution is just as vital as anyone else’s and you have to, to use Kim’s farming metaphor once more, you have to dig on the land that you stand and make use of that with the tools that you’ve got.

MV:  Incredible though. Thank you so much, both from a sense of gratitude from me, for coming onto the podcast but also just for the work that you’re doing and for the message that you’re spreading in the world and for the seeds that you’re sowing in the minds of young people and in other organizations as well, as you continue your work to help us come back to, as you said, throughout our conversation today, something that is truly universal, something that unites us beyond culture, beyond language, beyond religion beyond country or nationality, something that is truly a fundamental human value. So thank you very, very much for joining us today. Before we go, are there any last words, anything else you’d like to share with our listeners?

KP: Well, just remember, treat others and the planet as you wish to be treated!

AB: Yeah, I’ll be even more I’ll act in self interest here and just say go to www. rebootthefuture.org or globaldimension.org.uk for more information about everything that we do. And thank you so much, Madelaine.

MV: Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much.  

Thank you for listening to this episode of At The Heart Of It. For more news, research, and stories about wellbeing and social change, visit wellbeing-project.org. The Wellbeing Project is the world’s leading organization advocating for the wellbeing of changemakers and for wellbeing in changemaking. We believe wellbeing inspires welldoing. Thanks for listening and see you next time.  

Human Flourishing in EducationHuman Flourishing in Education

Stories from the Hearth

Hearth Summit São Paulo Session Featuring:

Enrique Tamés

Director of Human Flourishing Projects, Tecnológico de Monterrey
🌍 Monterrey, México

In São Paulo at the second regional summit held at FACENS University, Enrique Tamés, Director of Human Flourishing Projects, Tecnológico de Monterrey, took to the stage to share insights into human flourishing and education.

Watch the session below (in Portuguese) or click the cc button to generate auto-subtitles in a different language.

EXPLORE THE REGIONAL SUMMITS FURTHEREXPLORE THE REGIONAL SUMMITS FURTHER

Dive Into Stories From Around the World

Discover Wellbeing in Higher EducationDiscover Wellbeing in Higher Education

Meet and hear stories from the changemakers championing wellbeing in higher education.

Welcome to the Good Feeling House: Home to Peer-to-Peer Youth Mental HealthcareWelcome to the Good Feeling House: Home to Peer-to-Peer Youth Mental Healthcare

INTERVIEW WITH:

Thieu Scheys

“Conflixer” student volunteer at the Goed Gevoel Huisje (The Good Feeling House)
🌍 De Prins Secondary School, Diest, Belgium

In 2022, a passionate 17-year-old student, Noor Van Reet, won a grant to construct a small house on her school campus where peers could counsel and support each other about mental health. 

Today, the Goed Gevoel Huisje (or “The Good Feeling House”) welcomes students of all ages at the De Prins Secondary School to join their peers for a moment of calm, connection, and creativity throughout the school day. Students are trained as “Conflixers” by mental health professionals from the Flemish School Association (VSK) on how to provide age-appropriate peer support in an inviting and welcoming space. Seventeen-year-old volunteer Thieu Scheys joined the Peer-to-Peer Wellbeing Practices Forum at The Wellbeing Summit Brussels to share with changemakers the youth perspective on mental health and community wellbeing. Here’s his point of view.

What is the Goed Gevoel Huisje ?

The Goed Gevoel Huisje (the “Good Feeling House”) is a wooden house built on the playground of our school where students can come talk about their problems with other students. They can also come to hang out, play board games, and read books. We also plan other activities in the house outside of school. It’s a very cozy and fun place.

How does it work?

People can walk in to hang out or start talking to us, or they can send us a message beforehand about what they may want to talk about. We received training about how to talk to kids about their feelings and how to listen to them. We also give everyone the option to sit in different places at school to talk, because the house is on our playground where everyone can see, and maybe they want to talk in a private space.

How did the Goed Gevoel Huisje start?

It started with a student named Noor. When she was little, she was in the hospital for a while and couldn’t go to school. She realized how hard it was to be alone and have no other students or friends around to talk about her feelings. So she had the idea for the Good Feeling House and won a competition in Europe with the idea, which gave her a budget. Our school agreed to build the house on the playground and the company Wood-You built it based on our designs.

Why do you think the Goed Gevoel Huisje is important for your school?

Some people have good home environments where they can talk about their feelings but some people don’t, so it’s nice for kids to have a place at school where they can talk about their feelings with other students. It can also be really hard for kids to talk to adults about what’s going on because of the age difference. The volunteers are in the fifth year of school and we’re mostly focused on inviting students from the first and second grade to join. It’s easier to talk to someone when they are closer in age to you.

How can kids support each other with their mental health?

I think kids can support each other by listening to someone else, but also saying if they have a problem. If you can give an example, and other people feel that it’s possible to share their feelings, then it becomes something that just becomes so normal to talk about. It becomes an open conversation. In society, I don’t think it’s very normal and it would be really good to get rid of this stigma.

The Flemish School Association (VSK) equips students to serve as peer supporters with conversational skills for talking about mental health and resolving conflict. Conflixers also learn about topics like bullying, harassment, mental health first aid, hate speech, bias, and more.

“It is often small things that affect the atmosphere or wellbeing of students at school. The Conflixers are doing something about it!

Conflixers are students who support other students at their own school where necessary. It can take different forms, but one thing is certain:
students will get it done.

What have you learned since being involved with the Goed Gevoel Huisje?

We all had training about how to talk to each other about our feelings and mental health. It was really interesting because I learned that when we communicate, we often put our perspective on the other person. The main thing we can do to help each other is listen, not look at ourselves, and maybe not offer them a solution — just listen to the other person. It’s also important to take the time to care for ourselves and sometimes say no to other people. Sometimes, saying no to other people and thinking a little bit about yourself will mean that you can give more to other people eventually.

I’ve also learned how fun it is to be involved in a project. It’s very nice to work with other people, do activities, and do nice things for other people.

What is wellbeing to you?

I think wellbeing is feeling good in your skin, having the chance to do what you like, be who you are, and just feel good in general. I think other kids would agree with me that it’s about feeling good and happy in general, without too many bumps on the road.

What do adults not understand about young people’s mental health?

I think most adults are doing a good job helping young people express their feelings. Teachers, for example, do a lot for us. But I think they don’t understand that it can be very hard to go to someone who is a lot older than you. That can be a really big step, so we’re trying to make that step smaller so students will be quicker to act when something is wrong.

What do you need from adults to see the change you want in the world — to make it easier for kids to talk about their mental health?

I think adults need to be more open about how they feel. With kids, they may not want to share how they are feeling. But I think that if they start sharing from a young age, like if they are tired or not having a good day, then it will be easier for the young kids to share the same when they are older.

What advice do you have for other youth who want to do something positive in their community?

Spread the word about your project and just have fun! Make a good impression on the world and hopefully start to make it a better place. There are a lot of different little projects in the world and eventually, the world will become a much better place.

If someone wanted to start a Feeling Good House at their school, what would you tell them?

All schools are different and all people are different so just see what works for you. Do whatever you want and fun!

Discover the Wellbeing Movement in EuropeDiscover the Wellbeing Movement in Europe

Meet and hear stories from the changemakers championing the wellbeing movement in Europe.

Ahmed M. Baghdady

Manager, Research and Content Development

Qatar Foundation

Toronto, Ontario,
Canada

Ahmed Baghdady (EdD) is a research consultant at WISE, an initiative of Qatar Foundation. Until 2022, he was Research Manager at WISE and Adjunct Faculty member at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies in Qatar. Ahmed has over twenty-five years’ experience in education programming, research, strategic planning and institutional development. He has worked in Qatar Foundation for fifteen years where he held research and program leadership positions including six years at the RAND-Qatar Policy Institute (RQPI), a partnership between Qatar Foundation and the RAND Corporation. Ahmed has led and supported various policy and research studies in addition to several strategic planning and capacity building efforts for governments and higher education institutions. Prior to joining Qatar Foundation, Ahmed held program management positions with the Institute of International Education (IIE) and AMIDEAST.

He is an English language teacher by training and has designed and taught a variety of English language and teacher training programs at several institutions in Egypt including the American University in Cairo. Ahmed has Master’s and Doctor of Education degrees in Educational Leadership from the University of Leicester in the UK. His research focuses on educational leadership and policy with a special focus on the internationalization of higher education, both at home and abroad, and its implications for policy and practice. Ahmed has co-authored several research reports in addition to a few single-author publications on topics related to international higher education, education policy, leadership and governance. He is a member of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES).

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